Convincing, if overwhelming, account of abuse.
In her debut memoir, a 55-year-old Canadian woman relates her experiences with childhood sexual abuse, a narcissistic mother, and mental illness.
Keefe was born in 1958, the youngest of six in a French Roman Catholic family based in Winnipeg. Her father was a genial baker, then a dietician, who never dealt with his wife’s harsh ways: “He had given his life to God and would not retaliate even if my mother would hit him and be very abusive to him. He was married for life.” To escape this toxic environment, Keefe often stayed with older sister Monique, a bad move because Monique’s husband, Pierre, was a pedophile. From the age of 4 and for 11 “extremely long years,” Keefe was sexually abused by Pierre, which she silently endured due to her family’s stance on preserving marriages. Keefe then married as well, to a hardworking, supportive man. She had children of her own, but her early trauma led to a challenging existence ruled by various OCD rituals (regarding eating, cleanliness, list making, etc.) as well as frequent suicide attempts. She eventually sought therapy and was hospitalized several times, but she felt that many in the medical profession were ineffective and indeed biased toward those with mental illness. Eventually, Keefe found better balance to her life by becoming a mental health support worker and volunteer herself, in writing down her story, and in having a final confrontation, if not complete closure, with her abuser. Keefe’s narrative is an unpolished yet compelling cri de coeur depicting the consequences of childhood abuse. The fallout from her trauma is rather dizzying: she details also suffering from pica, depression, and a host of other syndromes. Her carping on the medical profession is also a bit relentless, although, when commenting about her chief doctor, she acknowledges, “I really had nothing bad to say about him. I was creating my own troubles and I was my worst enemy.” One hopes Keefe has now found some measure of peace and should be commended for seeking to help others by sharing this story.
Convincing, if overwhelming, account of abuse.Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-6332-7
Page Count: 232
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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