An engaging account of a gay man who fervently wishes to start a family.
A gay Hollywood couple struggles through a custody dispute after adopting a baby in this debut memoir.
Barnz had always had a strong desire to be a parent. After settling into a long-term relationship with his partner, Daniel (complete with a commitment ceremony in the Hamptons), they decided to adopt a baby. Through their attorney, they were connected to Emma, a young woman in Minnesota who was seven months pregnant. They nervously got through an initial phone call with her, desperately hoping she would choose them as the new parents. In the end she did, so they flew her to Los Angeles, put her up in an apartment, and arranged for doctor visits. Emma seemed fairly happy about the situation, and the bond between the three began to grow. Baby girl Zelda was born, a healthy and adorable arrival. But Barnz’s world came crashing down when an email arrived from the couple’s adoption lawyer. The birth father, Liam, was thinking of petitioning the court for custody. Emma had dated Liam only briefly, wanted nothing to do with him, and she noted that he did not want to be a part of the child’s life until now. Barnz was haunted by the thought that Zelda could be taken away, and his fears were magnified when Liam did in fact contest the adoption. Emma returned to Minnesota, and Barnz and Daniel anxiously awaited news from the lawyers as the fate of their new family hung in the balance. The author’s concise memoir offers a compelling account of the anxieties that can accompany an open adoption process when a previously absent party suddenly appears. The volume skillfully details the couple’s unquestionable commitment to the baby and their admirable desire to have a strong relationship with the mother. It’s an apolitical affair (their status as a same-sex couple is not an issue), but flashbacks to Barnz’s early years in New York give a fuller picture of what makes the author tick. Income remains a mystery; Barnz never goes to work (there is a fleeting reference to designing handbags and an unproduced screenplay by his partner), yet the couple can handily afford the birth and the lawyers who deftly carry them through the crisis. Still, this is an honest and ultimately endearing book.
An engaging account of a gay man who fervently wishes to start a family.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-948018-21-0
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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
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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