More than a pretty story, but a life shed and a new one grown, with results happy and natural.
In tight, no-nonsense prose, a fly-fishing guide describes that segment of her life when she and her son left Montana for Sweden, a man, and a river of grayling.
The second chance alluded to in the title refers to a new relationship and a new land. Olsson had been living in Montana with her rapidly estranging husband, running a fishing shop, when she received an invitation to come to Sweden. Lars Olsson was experiencing a growth of women anglers on the stream he kept, and he wanted Olsson to provide him with some insight into what women anglers were after. Lars had brought the ruined Gim River back from the devastation of logging, as proved by the grayling, a gregarious fish that only inhabit the purest of waters. Olsson was soon smitten by the grayling—they are not great fighters, but, oh, what a colorful dorsal fin—and by Lars. “Something about Lars made me feel awake and aware. Something bewildering was happening, and I couldn’t identify what it was.” Soon, Olsson and her son Peter were flying to the little town of Gimdalen to a ramshackle house by a resurrected river, and they plunged into Swedish life. Understandably, not all is smooth on the cultural-acclimation front, but they learn—as revealed in short chapters—how to deal with those long lapses of silence in Swedish conversations (“Living in rural Sweden for several months soon reduces verbal output to the aforementioned mmms, ja-has, and air-intake sounds followed by yooooo”), how to deal with the mosquitoes and ants, how to pick cloudberries, dance under the midsummer sun, and take the music of the river and the soughing of the trees as their own. Who can possibly doubt, after only a few pages, that Olsson made the right move at the right time?
More than a pretty story, but a life shed and a new one grown, with results happy and natural.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-31315-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
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
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
