An often engaging, if flawed, poetic remembrance.
Questions of disease abound in Orenstein’s debut memoir in verse.
In 1979, 100 years after Scottish surgeon William Macewen performed the first successful removal of a brain tumor, the 17-year-old author found himself in need of the same critical operation. From this experience springs a poetic memoir that follows the chronology of Orenstein’s diagnosis, surgery, healing, recovery, and adaptation. Almost all of the poems are written in free verse with strophes that often alternate, sometimes without clear purpose, between couplets and triplets. The frequently abrupt variations in line length could have been more effective with stronger line breaks. That said, this collection still manages to cohere, due to the sheer peril of its subject matter. Especially engaging is the way that the author mashes up clinical terminology with the language of internal anguish. Words such as “myoclonic,” “diplopia,” “lambda,” and “gurney” mix together with “helotry,” “aura,” and “agony.” For example, the remarkable and unusual “December 19, 1979” includes an extended, clinical, prosaic, and detached description of neurosurgery. However, it then fizzles out to a disappointing and perplexing ending. Even more intriguing is “The Man in the Intensive Care Unit,” in which the reader experiences the fullness of the poet’s tender sensibilities as he recalls the death of his hospital roommate: “you beg God / I have been a good man, please.” One wishes for more of this raw vulnerability instead of the book’s later shortcomings, such as sexist sentiment (“that wimpy sissy girly word / feelings”) and awkward expression of a sheltered worldview (“thankful for my warm bed / and for this cozy middle-class house”). There are also hokey openings, at times; for instance, a Webster’s dictionary definition begins “Birth of an Empath.” That said, the collection does contain a few individual gems and intelligently explores some of its subjects, such as double vision.
An often engaging, if flawed, poetic remembrance.Pub Date: July 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-09-687959-6
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2020
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
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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