A heartfelt and humorous memoir of a son of immigrants.
An artist and architect looks back on his unconventional life.
Born in San Francisco in 1929, Sazevich was the son of Russian émigrés and named after Alexander Borodin’s 1890 opera Prince Igor. After a brief, early stint in interwar Paris—where his father worked as a painter and his mother as a hat maker—Sazevich’s family returned to San Francisco in 1935. He’s lived for much of his life, and he writes about the city in impressive detail in this debut memoir. Something of a loner in his youth, he attended classes at the local chapter of the communist newspaper People’s Daily World as a teenage writing student. Soon after, in an early display of literary ambition, he wrote a play in an attempt to “express to the world the plight of the downtrodden.” After briefly attending San Francisco City College, Sazevich transferred: “As soon as I walked onto the campus of UC Berkeley,” he recalls, “I knew that the years of being difficult and bored had come to an end.” In 1953, he was drafted into the Army, which postponed his architectural studies at Berkeley. Like much of his biography, Sazevich’s Army experiences proved unusual; somehow, he was promoted to be captain of the 37th Engineer Group tennis team and was sent to Frankfurt, Germany. After returning to California, he resumed his courtship with a woman named Natasha, whose aunt married a member of the Romanov family, whom he eventually married. Throughout this book, the author’s life is marked by readable, remarkable, and often humorous experiences. Sazevich has a brisk prose style that’s full of honesty and humor; often, the writing is action-driven, but he occasionally issues somber reflections, as when he recalls a road trip with his father during his own late teens: “Looking back now, I understand much of what bound us so closely: not just love but curiosity, strong survival instincts, and a wonder at being alive amid undiscovered beauty.” The eccentric personalities of his larger-than-life parents loom large in this remembrance, and Sazevich writes movingly about their lives as well as his own.
A heartfelt and humorous memoir of a son of immigrants.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73232-693-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Reyes Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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
BOOK REVIEW
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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