An intrepid, educational, and thoroughly enjoyable voyage.
A live-aboard sailor recalls five decades and 300,000 nautical miles at sea in this debut memoir with an environmentalist edge.
Forsyth admits that he’s partial to the idea of escape. For starters, he escaped working in the cotton mills of Lancashire, England, by going to university and then joining the Royal Air Force. When his squadron was disbanded, he escaped England for Canada, emigrating in 1957 with his future wife, Edith. Soon, sailing also became a form of escape in itself. He and Edith had their first taste of it in 1961, chartering two bunks on a 78-foot ketch sailing around the tropics. After crewing on a number of other vessels, the couple purchased their first boat, Iona, in 1965. The memoir then documents the building and captaining of Fiona, a 42-foot cutter upon which Forsyth would do most of his travels. There were many breathtaking voyages, including two global circumnavigations and trips to the Arctic and Antarctic, the Baltic Sea, and the Panama Canal, among others. The memoir is also a tender love letter to Edith, who died in 1991. The tone of the book is likable from the outset; Forsyth is knowledgeable, earnest, and endearingly modest given the magnitude of his achievements. His sense of understatement is typified in his account of meeting the prime minister of Tonga: “As I sauntered up in my scruffy shorts and t-shirt, the Prime Minister was handing out long service medals to local officials. Despite my appearance, I was invited to the official luncheon, which was already laid out on the grass, covered with lace to keep the flies off.” Yet beneath Forsyth’s affable raconteurship lies a vital message, as during 50 years of sailing, he’s witnessed an alarming change to the environment: “I have often wondered which societies that I have visited by boat would be able to survive in a post-fossil fuel age.” This is a lovingly compiled work, with charts and photographs that effectively complement the narrative. It will be a joy for anyone familiar with deep-water sailing and an inspiration for those eager to try it.
An intrepid, educational, and thoroughly enjoyable voyage.Pub Date: March 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-83925-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Yacht Fiona
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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