It may be that menopause saw Greer (Daddy, We Hardly Knew You, 1989, etc.) coming and quaked, for surely the subject will never be quite the same again. Women, contends Greer, need not feel helpless in the face of what she calls ``the fifth climacteric'' (the others are birth, menstruation, defloration, and childbirth). ``The climacteric marks the end of apologizing,'' says Greer, and her book will give the committed reader the information she needs to begin to change into the author's ideal of a serene and powerful woman ``climbing her own mountain, in search of her own horizon.'' Writing no mere paean to the glories of life over 50, Greer looks at menopause through history and literature, skewering the medical establishment—the ``Masters of Menopause''—for its ignorance on the subject after so many centuries, and suggesting her own theories when others fall short (for instance, that menopausal symptoms may reflect too much estrogen, not too little). Differentiating between misery (self- pitying old women longing for their youth and sexuality) and legitimate grief (for the loss of the womb), Greer combs literature for positive images of older women, finding few in fiction—or real life. Even Colette and Simone de Beauvoir have little that is positive or optimistic to say about growing older. Mme. de Maintenon, mistress of Louis XIV, and actress Joan Collins, among others, do. Intensively researched, intelligently written, this erudite, literate work—a brilliant philosophical complement to Gail Sheehy's bestselling The Silent Passage (p. 381)—should inspire change in how we think about The Change.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1992
ISBN: 0-394-58269-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
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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