For armchair sightseers who take their travel books with a grain of salt.
Scottish globetrotter Kalder takes the road less traveled and returns with this gloomy, history-heavy, multi-part travelogue, three years in the making.
“The bleaker and more dismal the landscape, the more I enjoy it,” says the knowledgeable tour guide, a self-described “anti-tourist” eschewing comfort and banal, overcrowded destinations for the obscure and the unconventional. Kalder visits four forgotten Russian republic “black holes,” some seemingly frozen in time, others completely transformed by the machinations of a post-communist Russia. The first stop on Kalder’s walking tour is Kazan, the independently governed capital of Tatarstan, previously burned to the ground by Ivan the Terrible in 1552, now boasting a mosque construction site, a gruesome museum of medical oddities and a McDonald’s. Second stop: the strange, empty wastelands of the tree-worshipping Kalmykia people. Daunting to locate and mostly stagnant, its sad history of abolishment, deportation and disorientation makes for slow reading. Pagan-dominated Mari El, bordering Tatarstan on the north, proved a slightly more engaging locale. Abundant trees, lakes and “marriage agencies” make up for a resentful populace who have watched their city’s demographic change predominately to Russian. Fascinating intercourse with the much-revered, white-bearded, mystical high priest of the Chi Mari shockingly exposes him as a shameless self-promoter with dreams of celebrity. Udmurtia, another Republic assimilated by Russian inhabitants, houses a traditional, indifferent, squalor-stricken citizenry dominated by factories, squatting ice-fishermen and the homeless. This leaden, dreary vacation is finally countered with dark humor when Kalder is mercilessly grilled on camera by a dogged television journalist named Svetlana, posing some tough questions that render him speechless. Kalder is an unapologetically reclusive journeyman—the type who becomes paranoid in the company of complete strangers (as demonstrated by his hostile reaction to the flirtations of a smitten man in Kazan). His cavalier narration works best when taken in small doses, as do the jarring moments when the author openly admits to the fabrication of several dramatically detailed interactions.
For armchair sightseers who take their travel books with a grain of salt.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-8994-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2006
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
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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