While brazenly honest, this blend of autobiography and ruminations takes some distractingly strange turns.
A computer-savvy Cuban expatriate recounts his personal experiences and offers reflections in this debut book.
Rey may have been born in Cuba, but he has little good to say about the country. He, along with his wife and daughter, defected to Canada on May 26, 1987, when the plane they were on stopped to refuel in Gander, Newfoundland. The author explains: “I ran away from both the Capitalist Cuba with the Dictator Fulgencio Batista and the Communist Cuba with Emperor Castro the First.” His memories of Cuba involve terrible conditions with rationed food, gross inefficiency, and a lack of free speech. By contrast, he found his life in Canada and later the United States to be a time of great possibility. Though he and his family fled to a foreign country with just the clothes on their backs, they were able to make something of themselves. The author often expounds on his love of his new homeland. He also insists he should not be doubted just because his language is not perfect: “The accent is present in my English, but not on my knowledge or in my feelings, they are pure.” Later portions include an extended ode to Rosa Parks, some gripes about his life in the U.S. (particularly with the “City of Medicine,” Durham, North Carolina), and some of his letters to various newspapers. The last are usually meant to refute any starry-eyed reports that Cuba is anything but a brutal dictatorship. As he wrote to the Toronto Star in 2001 of politics in Cuba, “There is only one party in the island, as far as I witnessed during 25 years, the other choices are to become a fulltime silent person or to go to jail.” While it is clear the author has an ax to grind regarding his native land, his sincerity is never in doubt. For example, Rey points out that, although he worked with technology in Cuba, he “couldn’t have a personal computer, practically couldn’t even dream of having one.” He also manages to mix well-known events, such as the Mariel boatlifts, and relatively obscure tidbits, like the Cuban programming language LEAL. While such a breadth of material gives the book a very personal depth, some topics tend toward the bizarre. For instance, readers will learn more about the author’s views on prostitution and gay sexuality than they may have bargained for. Rey also includes feedback he received on his stories from a writing website. One section even features steps for creating beer. Nevertheless, in most discussions, a sense of humor shines through. He is at once cranky, passionate, and comical. For instance, the author explains that when becoming a U.S. citizen, he was asked if he would defend the country during a war. Though he said yes at the time, he would now alter his answer to include the caveat that if some companies he felt had wronged him were attacked, he would “gladly step aside instead and allow” the enemy “to conquer those places!” Taken together, this collection of memories, opinions, reflections, poetry, and miscellanea makes for a truly unique, if meandering, experience.
While brazenly honest, this blend of autobiography and ruminations takes some distractingly strange turns.Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63338-631-0
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Fulton Book
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2020
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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