Scrooges may complain about the ebullient excess celebrated in these rollicking pages, but most readers will greedily...
Australian by birth, Parisian by marriage, film critic and biographer Baxter (We’ll Always Have Paris, 2005, etc.) makes an amiable, jocular companion in this account of preparing a large Christmas dinner for a house full of French in-laws.
The final two-thirds of his frisky text deals with the peripatetic preparation of a specific meal, though in these same chapters, as earlier, the author digresses often and smoothly into reflections on Christmases past, in Australia and elsewhere. Baxter indulges in some occasional, informal cultural anthropology, for example, comparing the Gallic notion of sin with that of the American. “Providing it is conceived with imagination and carried off with flair,” he writes, the French regard sin as “evidence of endurance, of survival, of life.” He comments on the Gallic passion for the Christmas holiday (everything is closed; everyone is with family) and observes that, contrary to what readers of Julia Child may think, French cooking is essentially simple. Baxter rehearses his own evolution as a cook—in early manhood, he’d cooked for his girlfriends for reasons of economy but discovered its powerful aphrodisiac qualities—and confesses that he’d never much cared for Christmas as a lad (he preferred reading). He chronicles his courtship of his second wife and offers anecdotes about his writing career. But the meat in this pie is Baxter’s account of the Christmas when he cooked a piglet with its skin still in place, accompanied by oysters and fresh fruit. He prepared it Cajun-style, which made finding the right wine a challenge. His in-laws, not spice-lovers, had to be told about the French connection between Cajuns and Acadians before they licked their platters clean.
Scrooges may complain about the ebullient excess celebrated in these rollicking pages, but most readers will greedily consume the succulent narrative.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-156233-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
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
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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