“Take what you like and leave the rest,” writes George early on. It’s good advice for approaching this book.
An up-close and personal class in writing a novel.
Most authors of how-to-write books provide numerous excerpts and samples of work from successful, published authors in order to show aspiring writers how it’s done. Hot on the heels of her last Inspector Lynley mystery, The Punishment She Deserves (2018), the award-winning George breaks this tradition by analyzing a single novel, Careless in Red (2008), one of her Lynley mysteries. The excerpts are extensive and sometimes quite lengthy, so expect spoilers. Throughout, the author calmly teaches by example, pragmatically walking readers through numerous sections of the lengthy novel. “What I actually want to do,” she writes, “is show you how a particular process that I’ve developed over time works for me.” Before George begins a novel, she conducts extensive research. Here, she includes photographs she took of the seaside in Cornwall where the novel is set and discusses how she was looking for a location to establish tone and atmosphere. What she discovered “ended up giving me an entrée into my novel.” Once she has found a “plot kernel” and the settings, “everything else rises from the characters: the subplots, conflicts, theme, motifs, agendas, and the shape of the through line of the story.” The author creates elaborate prompt sheets from which a character “rises up and tells me who he is.” In other chapters, George explores dialogue, voice, point of view, and plot development. A key to the George method of writing is the “THAD,” or “Talking Heads Avoidance Device,” which is an “action that accompanies dialogue.” Writers must “avoid writing a scene that comprises only dialogue and taglines.” The author concludes with a detailed discussion of the importance of revising. “I’m a perfectionist,” she writes, but she doesn’t include much on language or style. Each chapter includes optional exercises. The author’s nuts-and-bolts approach may be a tad too dry for some fledgling writers.
“Take what you like and leave the rest,” writes George early on. It’s good advice for approaching this book.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7831-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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