A comprehensive account of one woman’s love life that loses its overarching narrative in the details.
In her debut memoir, Prada recounts the frustrations and anxieties of dating men in her 30s.
The author freely admits that she’s a “late bloomer”—a single schoolteacher who, at 30, lives with her hard-of-hearing grandmother in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this book, she recounts a string of unsuccessful relationships, with each man neatly encapsulated in his own chapter. There’s James, her first kiss; men with fanciful pseudonyms, such as “Dante Prosecco” and “Rich Calamari”; an array of Irish beaus (Seamus, Finn, Connor); and a Japanese surfer named Hiro. “No matter where I was, I was a magnet for foreigners,” she writes. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for someone funny who also has an accent.” Prada gives a complete account of the way the men entered her life—through school, via a mutual friend, or, more often than not, while drinking at an Irish bar—as well as the various confusions and insecurities that come with courtship and, inevitably, the breakups. One engaging story recounts a relationship that was particularly disastrous: at one point, Prada had to track down and steal back a car from an untrustworthy ex. But other accounts make for less-compelling reading. The book is more of a dry catalog of romantic happenings and the back-and-forth of flirty conversation than a narrative with memorable scenes. Tonally, it reads like a chatty monologue delivered over glasses of pinot grigio, complete with self-deprecating asides, constant worrying, and evaluations of the quality of men’s teeth. Prada sometimes strikes notes of humor—“Send me your poor, emotionally and geographically unavailable, huddled masses, yearning for credit or codependency, or just yearning to break free (probably from prison)”—or pathos (“How long had [he] been going around telling people…that he was trying to shake me, like some annoying piece of lint from a fuzzy sweater?”). But she focuses so heavily on the intricacies of each romantic entanglement that she leaves little room for deeper self-reflection. In this regard, the book’s resolution is no exception—like the author’s relationships, it’s ultimately unsatisfying.
A comprehensive account of one woman’s love life that loses its overarching narrative in the details.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5246-6860-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2017
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
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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