Glover writes fluently and well of Amadeus’s many beloveds, as well as of his tangled life in general.
A thoughtful portrait of the famed composer and the less famous women who inspired his work and served as its greatest vehicles.
Tom Hulce played it right in Amadeus: Wolfie Mozart was a bit silly, devoted to puns, bad jokes and bathroom humor. He also had little-appreciated depths of emotion and intellect, and Glover, a noted conductor of 18th-century music, does a fine job of bringing these out as she drops in to examine his process here and there, as with his deployment of timpani in the Requiem alongside the “Lacrimosa dies illa” dirge, a moment both brilliant and sorrowful. For some reason, Glover reveals, the timpani had frightened Mozart as a child, “together with their constant partners the trumpets . . . and his life ended, on an unresolved dominant chord.” At least one woman was profoundly affected by his all too premature death (of overwork and lack of sleep, it was said): his young wife Constanze, who tried to catch his illness so that she might die, too. Constanze, who lived to be 80, was perhaps not the most important woman in Mozart’s life; that honor goes to his sister Maria Anna, “Nannerl,” pretty and musically accomplished, who shared with him the “family’s customary lexicon of lavatorial catchphrase.” Other women of importance, to each of whom Glover gives voice, were the talented performers who brought his depiction of ideal womanhood to life: His Susanna (of Figaro), the most ideal of them all, was smart, loyal, funny, “a little vain” and above all strong, dominating every scene she was in. To be sure, Glover suggests, Mozart was fond of strong women, but some of those to whom he gave his heart crumbled before others.
Glover writes fluently and well of Amadeus’s many beloveds, as well as of his tangled life in general.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-056350-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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