A perversely prudish kiss-and-tell account by a Polish-born French woman who, as a Parisian schoolgirl in 1939, was seduced and abandoned by Sartre and also wooed by his erstwhile mate, her teacher. This is a whiny book. Though Lamblin insists that revenge is not her object, plainly it is—and if she were a better writer, that might be an enlivening motive. But in a paradox unlikely to entertain or edify the reader, Lamblin seeks to justify herself morally without confiding the full details of her story. Anyone looking for rounded portraits of the players will not find them here. Sartre (``a very poor lover'') seems to have been a cold, machinating bully who, at their first encounter, ``was wearing a sort of faded blue T-shirt of questionable cleanness. On his ill- favored face was a constellation of blackheads.'' So why kiss him? De Beauvoir, known familiarly as ``the Beaver,'' comes off as selfish but less decisive; she remains a friend, kind of, to Lamblin for years after the triangular romance has ended. Their apparent villainy would be more interesting and acceptable if Lamblin had only revealed more about her dysfunctional existentialists. But, as though contrite in the act of exposure, she refuses to give the dirt, either sexual or cerebral. The best parts of the memoir concern her Jewish family's hardships as newcomers in France and as targets of wartime anti-Semitism. Otherwise, Lamblin's tense, humorless tirade tells little, though there are diverting moments of giddy, inadvertent camp: ``the Beaver had calves of steel,'' thanks to her hiking and biking habit. An enraged, high-minded squeal from an inamorata. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 12, 1996
ISBN: 1-55553-251-9
Page Count: 184
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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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