A light and sweet account of an outsider’s encounter with Italy’s education system, customs, and cuisine.
An American physician takes a post teaching English to Italian schoolchildren in this debut memoir.
Disillusioned with medicine and a dead-end relationship, Morris accepted a temporary teaching position in the small Italian city of Civitanova, exchanging public school classes and private tutoring for free room and board with his charming host family, the Pezzonis. Morris experienced Italian life outside of the tourist centers of Rome and Florence and certainly cut an anomalous figure while doing it: a middle-aged American man in a school operated almost entirely by stylish Italian women, lacking a salary or car and subsequently totally dependent on his hosts. He was virtually the only American tutor in the area who was male or above the age of 30. Yet the education challenges he encountered should be familiar to teachers from all walks of life: overcrowded classrooms, easily distracted and hormonally charged students, and institutional chaos. Morris was a committed, genuinely passionate teacher, and as the semester progressed he explored techniques to engage both his rambunctious public school students and his private pupils. He eventually became the strict yet beloved disciplinarian of the school and, at the end of the year, organized an English-speaking contest that culminated in an emotional awards ceremony. Meanwhile, he sampled the neighborhood winery at bargain prices, introduced his Italian hosts to American-style chili, and engaged in brief flirtations with his fellow teachers. The narrative fires rapidly through encounters with many different students, which can make keeping track of who is who difficult. Morris expresses frustrated bemusement at his American colleagues’ inability to articulate why they are teaching English in Italy but doesn’t share an answer for himself. A more probing exploration of Morris’ own past and psyche, beyond a few hints regarding romantic strife, professional frustration, and familial estrangement, would render his triumphs and failures more impactful. Leaving the story of a man walking away from his old life essentially untold, the book instead delivers a slight travelogue that overflows with Morris’ clear love of Italian culture, food, and people.
A light and sweet account of an outsider’s encounter with Italy’s education system, customs, and cuisine.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5372-3934-7
Page Count: 190
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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