The author’s sailing expeditions may be of more interest to readers than the wandering voyage of self-discovery.
An environmentalist filmmaker recalls her long journey toward fulfilling her dream.
Author McVeigh was a middle school student when, on a field trip to a university, she saw “a blue sea star sitting all alone in a tank” at the oceanography department. “It looked so lonely and sad—it was as if I could feel what it was thinking and feeling,” she writes. “Professors talked about oceans around the world and all I could do was look at that lonely sea star and wish I could do something for it.” Years later, McVeigh did something for marine life by co-writing and producing Racing with Copepods, a documentary about middle school students who learn to sail while studying plankton. In McVeigh’s meandering memoir, she chronicles her arduous pursuit of her goals, which may have caused the demise of her marriage. “Dreams. When are they delusional, and when should we fight for them?” she asks. McVeigh’s father fought for his ideals when he joined his colleagues in the strike of the nation’s air traffic controllers in 1981. President Reagan fired all 11,500 of them, casting a shadow over McVeigh’s childhood. “When I see my parents, I only remember the pain of all those past years after dad was fired,” she says. Her own marriage was a struggle—she and her husband almost ruined themselves financially by working for a nonprofit sailing organization. McVeigh is in her element capturing the thrills of sailing: “you are negotiating only with nature, that higher spirit.” But much of the book reads like a diary dump with minimal editing or fact-checking. Mount St. Helens, for example, is misplaced in Oregon. And while the author narrates her own thought processes extensively, other characters aren’t fully realized.
The author’s sailing expeditions may be of more interest to readers than the wandering voyage of self-discovery.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-81915-9
Page Count: 344
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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