Of a piece with other inspirational and aspirational memoirs by athletes who have overcome adversity.
Memoir/cautionary tale by former basketball star Williams, whose fortunes were utterly changed a decade ago following a motorcycle accident.
The author, the second overall pick of the 2002 NBA draft, grew up in wonderfully loving circumstances that any child might long for, his parents champions of stability and strong advocates of education, affectionate and supportive though not without frailties. Moving South to go to college at Duke University as a highly recruited point guard, he experienced racism; though his personal view is that “all that matters is being a good person and putting in the work,” it’s clear that others who are less evolved are going to pose impediments. The Blue Devil champion wasn’t even bent on self-destruction but instead did something dumb, taking to the streets on a high-performance motorcycle and hitting a light pole at speed, leading to a host of medical difficulties that it would take years to reckon with. Williams is even-tempered and pleasant throughout the book; he accepts responsibility for his fate without beating himself up too much. The reasonableness and niceness are fine in life but perhaps less effective in literature; without much conflict, in other words, there’s not much tension to give this memoir any snap. Readers will feel for Williams, and the tone is earnest, the content entirely reasonable—and predictable to a note: thanks are due to God, Mom, Coach (“when Mike Krzyzewski talks, you listen. He is intimidating and comforting at the same time”), and, of course, the doctors (“as physically imposing as [the doctor] was, he was the dictionary definition of a gentle giant”). The best parts of the book are the author’s later reflections on the role of sport in the lives of young men and women, especially those who have no other advantages.
Of a piece with other inspirational and aspirational memoirs by athletes who have overcome adversity.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-232798-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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