Not enough style or humor to keep the pages turning: the author brings so many touristy preconceptions to the plate (one...
Two English sisters play peasants in the Ligurian countryside in Italy: one describes their adventure here, clearly hoping to do for the tiny village of Diano San Pietro (and for herself), what Peter Mayle did for Provence.
The girls arrive to graft roses as a summer job, and end up buying a peasant’s cottage for a pittance. They restore the little house, learn how to sanitize its outhouse, and cultivate a hillside garden. They import their boyfriends and a few power tools, none of which are compatible with the tough foliage and easygoing ways of the Italian hillside village. They polish their shaky Italian and learn the eccentric Ligurian dialect. Liguria is an olive-growing area, and when the women arrive, olive prices are in the pits, resulting in a depressed local economy and even more depressed local inhabitants. By the end of the story, however, a lipid-conscious society elevates olive oil to new heights, and the prosperity of Liguria is restored. Small incidents—the purchase of a British car, the inability to get parts, the subsequent abandonment of same, minute descriptions of local fêtes and festivals—make up what passes for a story line here. There is also much description of food—how it is eaten, what it consists of, and in what order the courses arrive according to local protocol. This causes no end of yuks for the British sisters, who are eventually seduced and learn to adapt. Presumably, they learn to cook, too.
Not enough style or humor to keep the pages turning: the author brings so many touristy preconceptions to the plate (one tires early on of descriptions of “hanky-headed” olive growers and their quaint, local customs) that it is hard to see whether she fell in love with a country or an ideal.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-019850-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 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
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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