Colette the woman is eternally fascinating.
Any biography of the celebrated French author of Gigi, Chéri, and the Claudine novels would have to be replete with scandalous detail.
This entry, covering the first half of her life, does not disappoint. Colette’s novels of the demimonde and Parisian café society were noteworthy for both their high quality and their autobiographical content. Her numerous marriages, and her hetero and lesbian affairs, provided Colette with a subject and a lifestyle that made her one of the notorious fin-de-siècle celebrities. Francis and Gontier (co-authors of Simone de Beauvoir: A Life, A Love Story, 1987, etc.) sift through rumor, legend, and shadowy fact to piece together a life that would cause modern jet-setters to blanch, perhaps. Colette’s contention that she had black ancestors has usually been dismissed by her biographers as a literary conceit—as yet another example of her self-promotional efforts. Here, though, the authors dig deep to follow her maternal lineage to a black grandfather from Martinique. They also make great strides at dispelling Colette’s bitter late-career assertion that she was bullied into writing by her first husband, the publishing scion Henry Gauthier-Villara. Known as Willy, he was a leading literary figure of the day and, in fact, collaborated with his wife on dozens of novels, essays, and plays. He also gave her syphilis. Colette and Willy both conducted numerous affairs, she (notably) with the Marquise de Morny. Known as “France’s most notorious cross-dresser,” Missy, as she was called, and Colette staged a pantomime that summoned the police. Colette’s oeuvre remains of mild interest.
Colette the woman is eternally fascinating.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 1998
ISBN: 1-883642-91-4
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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