too little up to the reader’s imagination and asks too much of their patience.
Wayfarer Noren and his girlfriend Suzanne argue their way around the Baltic on the back of a motorcycle through a lot of
bad weather and sinus trouble. The idea was this: to ride a motorcycle through Denmark north to Scandinavia up to the Arctic Circle then south and east through Russia and the Baltic states to Germany via Poland. It would be done on a shoestring, as they had little money, yet they were veterans of the road and this trip looked promising: newly opened lands, brave new prospects. Then it started to rain. And, evidently, it continued to do so, with frequent high winds, for the entire three-month slog. Readers are treated to a few of those candent, chance moments that hard traveling afford—an unexpected day sail in the Arctic, a glimmering little island off Estonia that had just been opened to those other than Soviet apparatchiks—and Noren, appealingly, never lets background information get in the way of his encounters with places, for happenstance and immediacy are his guides. But mostly it is extended recounts of the fighting between Noren and Suzanne: she, understandably, wants to bag the trip, particularly after her allergies kick in; he, incomprehensibly (for his compulsion never becomes anything to hang a passion on), wants to push forward. This makes slow progress for both them and the reader, compounded by Noren's unsure hand at writing. He has a tendency to baldly explain rather than let the narrative unfold, he plays back too many conversations verbatim—“Frahm Amerika? Eww iss frahm Amerika? Naj! I love Amerika. Cowboys!”—he trots out too many travel truisms (“The world becomes so big when you're out in it”), and he protests about the weather too much. A strange adventure doesn't insure a compelling travel narrative—and Noren's is so unpolished that it simultaneously leaves too little up to the reader’s imagination and asks too much of their patience. Wayfarer Noren and his girlfriend Suzanne argue their way around the Baltic on the back of a motorcycle through a lot of bad weather and sinus trouble. The idea was this: to ride a motorcycle through Denmark north to Scandinavia up to the Arctic Circle then south and east through Russia and the Baltic states to Germany via Poland. It would be done on a shoestring, as they had little money, yet they were veterans of the road and this trip looked promising: newly opened lands, brave new prospects. Then it started to rain. And, evidently, it continued to do so, with frequent high winds, for the entire three-month slog. Readers are treated to a few of those candent, chance moments that hard traveling afford—an unexpected day sail in the Arctic, a glimmering little island off Estonia that had just been opened to those other than Soviet apparatchiks—and Noren, appealingly, never lets background information get in the way of his encounters with places, for happenstance and immediacy are his guides. But mostly it is extended recounts of the fighting between Noren and Suzanne: she, understandably, wants to bag the trip, particularly after her allergies kick in; he, incomprehensibly (for his compulsion never becomes anything to hang a passion on), wants to push forward. This makes slow progress for both them and the reader, compounded by Noren's unsure hand at writing. He has a tendency to baldly explain rather than let the narrative unfold, he plays back too many conversations verbatim—“Frahm Amerika? Eww iss frahm Amerika? Naj! I love Amerika. Cowboys!”—he trots out too many travel truisms (“The world becomes so big when you're out in it”), and he protests about the weather too much. A strange adventure doesn't insure a compelling travel narrative—and Noren's is so unpolished that it simultaneously leaves
too little up to the reader’s imagination and asks too much of their patience.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-885211-45-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Travelers’ Tales
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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