A voyage fit only for lunatics. In terms of achievement, Tayler could as easily have played Russian roulette.
A dangerous and self-indulgent journey up and down the Congo River: thankfully, travel-writer Tayler (Siberian Dawn, 1999) comes in the end to understand it as such.
Feeling a peckishness of the spirit for all the tried-and-true reasons—his job a corporate trap, his writing going nowhere, the need for a “defining achievement” at a “decisive moment,” the fact that at his age Christ had already died—Tayler decides to hit the road. V. S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River struck the spark, and Stanley’s 1870 expedition fanned it into a blaze: He would travel the Congo (Zaire at the time of his 1995 trip) River from Kinshasa to Kisangani, 1,100 miles in a pirogue. That ought to blow the gunk out of his carburetor, particularly since he knows that Mobutu’s Zaire was one corrupt, murderous, uncomfortable—but impossibly romantic—place. The barge trip up the river to Kisangani drives home the discomfort and corruption, and the shroud of suspicion that rests on any white traveler to those parts—the whites are assumed to be after something, from diamonds to you-don’t-want-to-know—but erases any romantic notions. Tayler isn’t much of a place portraitist (“the sun died a vivid death in a violet sky”), but he does an ample job of conveying the dread of a nation still on its knees from the army looting sprees of 1991 and 1993. The “heat and crowd and hassle” of the barge trip is more than matched by the terror of the downriver paddle in the pirogue. Out of a land of parrots and butterflies would come strangers, saying to Tayler and his guide: “Ah, you have a gun. You win! We would have robbed and killed you both, and who would have ever known!” Ultimately, he realizes he is endangering not just his own life, but the lives of others in his company, and that the trip proves little but how scared one can become.
A voyage fit only for lunatics. In terms of achievement, Tayler could as easily have played Russian roulette.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-80826-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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