A multifaceted encounter with historical, spiritual, and personal worlds.
A debut book mixes an autobiographical account with a paranormal investigation of a property in rural Virginia.
The story begins with Miller’s decision to buy a house in a part of Virginia known as Clover Hollow. He was returning from a trip to the Coral Sea when he made the purchase sight unseen. Upon his arrival in Virginia, he was pleased with the risk he had taken, explaining how he discovered it was “a beautiful country house with a wrap around covered porch.” More than mere beauty, the house had a profound effect on him, giving him the feeling that “Earth’s natural energy” was emanating from the area. Moreover, the author soon learned that the house had once been owned by his forbears, and an old Native American trail cut across his property. Add into the equation odd-looking rocks and “bizarre supernatural activity,” and the question became what, if anything, did it all mean? As Miller believes that “there are no coincidences, everything happens for a reason, and everything is connected,” he proceeds to make his point with a combination of American history, views on extraterrestrials and ancient cultures, and stories of his personal experiences. The resulting stew provides a lot for the reader to savor. While accounts of Colonial Americans can be dry (“John Miller Sr, brother of Barbara Miller and uncle and friend of Jacob Mann Jr, also crossed over the mountains and settled on Indian Creek around 1775”), the many details of the author’s life add up to a strangely intimate portrait. From his childhood spent exploring caves to his earning money as an Uber driver, the work shows readers a man who seeks to understand the strangeness of his own past and property. Although evocations of figures like the Japanese author Masaru Emoto may fall flat with skeptics, the book illuminates the journey of one man dating back to the arrival of his ancestors in the New World. While Miller admits his ultimate conclusions are “very controversial,” they make for an imaginative attempt to explain the unexplainable.
A multifaceted encounter with historical, spiritual, and personal worlds.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9907777-1-7
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Blue Heron
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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