Potok, whose novels of families at odds with themselves ring so true (I Am the Clay, 1992, etc.), turns his attention to a deeply divided real-life family of Russian Jews. Volodya Slepak's name will be familiar to anyone who was active in the movement to free Soviet Jews in the 1970s and '80s. He and his wife, Masha, were two of the most steadfast of the "refuseniks," Jewish activists who were denied exit visas to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet Union. What is less familiar about Slepak is his family's unusual history. His father, Solomon, was a high-ranking functionary in the Bolshevik movement who weathered the purges and bloodshed of the Stalin era. Virtually until his death in his late 70s, Solomon continued to uphold the party and the Kremlin, disdaining his son's political activities. Potok, who first encountered Volodya when he himself was active in the movement for Soviet Jewry, has had access to many hours of taped interviews with Volodya, Masha, their two sons, and other family members and friends, and he has used them to reconstruct the story of a bitterly estranged father and son, and the ideological civil war that split them apart. Regrettably, because so much of the history of Solomon's life is missing—the KGB wouldn't release his files, much of his early story can only be garnered by reconstruction and guesswork—the first half of the book is sketchy and unsatisfying. When Potok begins to trace Volodya's history, his novelist's eye and ear help bring the tale to life. But the end of the story is a somber one, with both Volodya and the author given to pessimistic ruminations on the future of their respective homelands. While not on a par with his best fiction, this Potok offering will engage many readers, particularly those with vivid memories of the struggles of, and for, Soviet Jews.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-394-58867-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 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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