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THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MY MOTHER

In this bleak little book, psychiatrist/novelist Wheelis (The Doctor of Desire, 1987, etc.) offers a history of his dutiful but loveless relationship with his mother, an account of her death, and a pre-vision of his own life's end—which, at age 74, he feels to be imminent. Wheelis grew up in poverty in the American South, son of a doctor whose tuberculosis prevented him from working and who occupied all the attention of his wife, who chose to care for him at home. The author's childhood memories are of ugly things like sputum cups and sheets boiling in a cauldron in the backyard. When Wheelis's father died, the boy replaced him as the center of his mother's devotion, granting him a burdensome power over her. Guilt that Wheelis would feel the rest of his life arose from an incident when, as a preadolescent sleeping in bed with his mother, he explored her naked body as she slept. After that, he did his duty by her, with no joy and little love, nursed her through a spell of illness when he was in college, and invited her for long visits after he married, became a psychiatrist, and moved across the country—even though her dependency and devotion made him and his wife acutely uncomfortable. Wheelis's mother became, as he honestly but brutally says here, ``a foolish old woman'' while still in her 50s—and she remained so until her death in a nursing home nearly a half-century later. Is our dismal and often cruel existence, Wheelis wonders, unredeemed by any meaning after its end? He fantasizes returning to the dear scenes of his married life in the Pacific Northwest, and finds solace in the certainty that his survivors will love and miss him—as, to his grief, he never could manage to love his mother. A brave book, but a grim one.

Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1992

ISBN: 0-393-03067-9

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1991

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I AM OZZY

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

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

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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