In her first nonfiction work, Allende (The Infinite Plan, 1993, etc.) produces a beautiful and deeply personal account of the process of grieving and the power of stories. This volume was written over a one-year period during which her 28-year-old daughter lay in a coma, struck down by a mysterious illness. The book's narrative shifts back and forth from a detailed, magical description of Chilean-born Allende's life to a somewhat numbing account of Paula's deteriorating condition. Certain figures from Allende's past are presented as the inspirations for her novels' characters as she documents her family life, a surreal three years spent in Lebanon, her first marriage, and the early years of her career, writing advice columns and horoscopes. Despite a tendency to revel in sentimentality, this is an engagingly readable and revealing book. It is divided into two sections by the simultaneous description of two pivotal events within the entwined narratives: Paula's transfer from a Spanish hospital to a home in San Francisco, where she will eventually die, and the author's account of the 1973 military overthrow of Chile's first socialist president, her great-uncle, Salvador Allende. Paula's move allows her to pass away surrounded by a loving family who eventually learns to accept tragedy and celebrate life. The military coup plunges Chile into a reign of terror marked by violent political repression, torture, and exile. Allende is forced to flee her country and, in an effort to come to terms with her life and the disintegrating world around her, she discovers her extraordinary talents as a novelist. Ultimately, Paula is a book about writing, a personal confession of the redemptive power of "the ineradicable vice of telling stories" in a world marked by injustice—both political and personal. A fascinating window into the creative world of Allende, who, with dignity and courage, tells her life's story as reflected through the tragic death of her daughter.
Pub Date: May 2, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-017253-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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