by Charles Wilkins ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 17, 1999
An enthralling, sometimes breathtaking glimpse into one of North America’s few remaining traveling circuses. The Great Wallenda Circus is run by the scion of a great (though some might say cursed) 20th-century circus family, Rick Wallenda, whose own high-wire career was ended by a crippling 40-foot fall in early 1996. In 1997, Wilkins (After the Applause, not reviewed, etc.) decided to conquer his writer’s block and satisfy his lifelong fascination with the circus by learning as much as he could about this troupe of acrobats, aerialists, animal trainers, and clowns. Wilkins, who followed the circus on a beleaguered month-long tour of central Canada, is determined to find out why these performers choose such a difficult and dangerous life, and, to that end, skillfully elicits stories, both terrifying and enlightening, from many of them. The picture that emerges is one of an honorable profession peopled by dedicated, iconoclastic artists who spend most of their scant downtime training to improve their already considerable gifts; the surprising aspect of the author’s account is his depiction of the intense family bond, both figurative and literal, that the troupers share. Michael Redpath, who leads his family in a trapeze act, credits the circus with giving him “the chance to spend more time with my wife and kids than most people get to spend.” Wilkins’s admiration for the artists he meets is especially evident in his portrait of the elephant trainer, Bobby Gibbs, with whom he forms an especially close bond, but it’s Rosa Luna (once the star of her own hair-hanging act and now the matriarch of one of the many families working in the Great Wallenda Circus) who provides the most salient point when she tells Wilkins that “In the circus, anything that is any good is painful.” An exhilarating tribute to a disappearing art. (21 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 17, 1999
ISBN: 0-7710-8847-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Ozzy Osbourne with Chris Ayres ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 2010
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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IN THE NEWS
by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
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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