Witty, at times self-deprecating, and always shrewdly observant, Jacobson offers a wry, revealing portrait of a land and its...
A sharp-eyed British traveler recalls his greatest adventure.
Twenty-five years ago, accompanied by his Australian-born wife, Jacobson (Whatever It Is, I Don’t Like It, 2012, etc.) journeyed far and wide by bus, car, train and camper around Australia, feeling, he admits “near anguish…the whole time I was there.” “Potholes. Savage, twisting bends. Not enough room for more than 1 ½ cars in either direction,” he complained about one long drive. “Thorny cork-screw trees….Extreme chromatic monotony. Gnarled, evil-tempered landscape,” his wife replied. As Jacobson unhappily discovered, roads in the Outback were treacherous, when they existed at all, and a driver might well encounter a “mesmerized kangaroo” or marauding dingo along the way. “STAY WITH THE VEHICLE,” the Royal Automobile Association warned. When a search party eventually is sent, the safety literature added, “vehicles will be far easier to find than isolated human beings in the vastness of the Outback landscape.” As for the landscape, often it was bleak: dry, dusty, flat and barren. Some towns along the way had been gentrified, with tacky souvenir shops and kitschy restaurants. About Australians, Jacobson can be acerbic, especially when confronted with small-minded provincialism and racism directed at Aborigines. There were enough high points, though, to elicit his praise: “There is no more variously beautiful country,” he finally admits: the orange hills and hidden valleys of Kununurra, for example, and Ayers Rock, described by one 19th-century traveler as “an immense pebble” but appearing to Jacobson “in every way more surprising” than what he expected. “Close up,” he writes, “its texture is like the skin of an animal—creased and enfolded and a little weary, but also soft to the touch.”
Witty, at times self-deprecating, and always shrewdly observant, Jacobson offers a wry, revealing portrait of a land and its people.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60819-895-5
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
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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