Would-be writers will find Percy’s passionate, pragmatic cheerleading inspiring and energizing.
An accomplished writer comes to the defense of genre.
Percy (The Dead Lands, 2015, etc.) has practiced what he preaches. His novels can be considered genre novels, but they’re more. In this deeply personal and intriguing apologia for the “pop lit” and pop film that he grew up on—he’s read The Gunslinger more than any other book; Jaws is his favorite movie—the author enthusiastically argues for good “plotted fiction,” books that are “neither fish nor fowl, both literary and genre.” He loves story, “discovering what happened next.” Too much literary fiction, he argues, has “fallen under the indulgent spell of…pretty sentences.” Born out of past lectures and articles, this is a craft book about how to be a better writer, but it’s also a colorful memoir about a young boy who loved reading, especially horror and fantasy books, and realized he wanted to be a writer. Each chapter takes on a specific topic. With setting, aim for a few “indelible moments.” Research your setting fully, and “know what you write.” With tension and suspense, “strategize the delivery of bad news.” Violence? Avoid at all costs “gorenography,” which is “hollow, excessive, masturbatory.” Make the ordinary extraordinary, or “we won’t be willing to follow you to long ago and far away.” Also, don’t provide too much back story. Occasionally, Percy is prescriptive. The book abounds with numerous, sometimes-lengthy excerpts from works, including his own, that he admires. One of the book’s strengths is the many instructive examples of close, in-depth readings. Curious as to why The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was so popular and “compulsively readable,” he read it twice, then color-coded key passages throughout to reveal what made it tick. Percy is in “awe, hypnotized, overwhelmed” by Michael Chabon’s sentences, which “lavishly uncoil.” On Donna Tartt’s sentences in The Goldfinch: your “eyes bug and your heart hurries.”
Would-be writers will find Percy’s passionate, pragmatic cheerleading inspiring and energizing.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-55597-759-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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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