Forced literary allusions aside, a stirring encounter with people overrun by time and change.
Russian-American Bengis (I Have Come Here to Be Alone, 1976, etc.) searches for spiritual roots in her parents’ native land, buffeted by tumultuous times after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Although the Cold War now seems like a receding chapter in somebody else’s history book, the casualties were real and not confined to the battlefields of Vietnam and Afghanistan. When the author went to live in Russia at the invitation of her friend “B,” she stepped into a state that, pressed to the wall by resolute capitalist antagonists, had diverted so many resources into “defense” that it became the first modern society to actually see the rate of infant mortality rise while life expectancy went down. Looking for “what socialism might have killed” in the country of her heritage, Bengis finds deep wounds and much suffering but an intact soul, true to the Russian proverb that “hope dies last.” It’s a soul personified in the turbulent B: reeling from the end of her marriage, plagued by money problems, and gripped with paranoid fear that some mobster will covet her apartment and send thugs to appropriate it, in spite of it all, she lives for art. Together B and Bengis encounter a cast of characters struggling to survive Yeltsin’s “catastroika.” (Among their late-night, kitchen-table insights is the notion that cheese from America tastes like a rubber ball.) The author’s eye for telling detail is sharp; her notions often fleeting, yet engaging—e.g., has the socialist doctrine that “everything belongs to the People” left behind it a nation of incorrigible petty thieves? The decision to have a malignancy removed in a Russian hospital puts Bengis in close contact with women facing similar surgeries; their shared, unconditional support and eventual joy at her recovery are inspirational, as the Russian spirit transcends both dreariness and angst.
Forced literary allusions aside, a stirring encounter with people overrun by time and change.Pub Date: May 14, 2003
ISBN: 0-86547-672-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: North Point/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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