A fast-paced, engaging account of life both at home and abroad.
A memoir focuses on an American woman’s travels and relationships.
Schott explains in her book that she had a large part-dog, part-wolf pet named Wogart. Wogart accompanied her wherever she landed––and she ended up in a variety of places. At the age of 22, she was involved in a motorcycle accident and an abusive relationship. After leaving the relationship, she decided to relocate to New York City to pursue her love of music. After living in New York, she moved to Nevada City, California. It was there that she met Jesse, a musician who became her boyfriend. Their relationship was rocky, but it didn’t stop the two from traveling to Europe, where they bought a van. They made a living as buskers, moving from place to place. The van could get cold; local people could be generous or downright creepy; and busking was always hit or miss. Yet they survived all the while with Wogart in tow. They found themselves “always looking for remnants––the beauty or simplicity––of the old world.” After the European adventure, the couple settled in Portland, Oregon, and ran a record store together. But Jesse wouldn’t be around forever. The memoir moves breezily from place to place. No sooner is the author confounded by redneck neighbors in California than she is playing violin to earn money in St. Tropez. It makes for an enjoyable read, with succinct input on topics such as emotional pain and Mozart. Of the latter, Schott writes: “Mozart doesn’t just compose. He speaks. When I listen to Mozart, I hear a dialogue, and I’m sure I can understand what he’s trying to say.” Some of the recollections do not say quite as much. A story about traveling to a skate park in Bolzano, Italy, is essentially uneventful. It is not as impactful as relating the difficulty of staving off attention from a local weirdo in Bavaria. Or when the author realized that her beloved companion had done the unthinkable and they had finally reached the end of the line.
A fast-paced, engaging account of life both at home and abroad.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2021
ISBN: 979-8776779718
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
Spears’ vulnerability shines through as she describes her painful journey from vulnerable girl to empowered woman.
A heartfelt memoir from the pop superstar.
Spears grew up with an alcoholic father, an exacting mother, and a fear of disappointing them both. She also displayed a natural talent for singing and dancing and a strong work ethic. Spears is grateful for the adult professionals who helped her get her start, but the same can’t be said of her peers. When she met Justin Timberlake, also a Mouseketeer on the Disney Channel’s updated Mickey Mouse Club, the two formed an instant bond. Spears describes her teenage feelings for Timberlake as “so in love with him it was pathetic,” and she’s clearly angry about the rumors and breakup that followed. This tumultuous period haunted her for years. Out of many candidates for villains of the book, Timberlake included, perhaps the worst are the careless journalists of the late 1990s and early 2000s, who indulged Timberlake while vilifying Spears. The cycle repeated for years, taking its toll on her mental health. Spears gave birth to sons Sean Preston and Jayden James within two years, and she describes the difficulties they all faced living in the spotlight. The author writes passionately about how custody of her boys and visits with them were held over her head, and she recounts how they were used to coerce her to make decisions that weren’t always in her best interest. As many readers know, conservancy followed, and for 13 years, she toured, held a residency in Las Vegas, and performed—all while supposedly unable to take care of herself, an irony not lost on her. Overall, the book is cathartic, though readers who followed her 2021 trial won’t find many revelations, and many of the other newsworthy items have been widely covered in the run-up to the book’s release.
Spears’ vulnerability shines through as she describes her painful journey from vulnerable girl to empowered woman.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781668009048
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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