A disarmingly modest yet profound tale of redemption.
The story of a desperately poor Londoner and a twice-abandoned Staffordshire bull terrier named George poses the question, "Who rescued whom?"
When acclaimed East London–based artist Dolan was jobless and living on government assistance, he could easily have blamed others or several factors that led to his hard circumstances. However, in his first book, he is surprisingly cleareyed and honest about how he largely caused his own failures: truancy, substance abuse, and being a career criminal with nothing going for him throughout his 20s. He was clearly disappointed in himself but managed to retain a kernel of optimism. Living in poverty in a cold, dirty apartment, Dolan admits he was "as far away from sensible as you can get.” Then he agreed to take George in from a couple of fellow transients. Readers share his sense of expectation of changing fortunes when he writes movingly about the first time he took George outside: "I just wanted to concentrate on how good it felt to be walking a dog again….It seemed like the first time in fifteen years I'd walked anywhere with a good honest purpose." The author’s forthrightness and great empathy for his new best friend ("God, I felt sorry for him. I knew exactly how it felt to be the one not chosen, the one who got left behind") make him sympathetic and engaging. With George beside him at all times, Dolan regained his creative fire and love of drawing, both of which were suffocated by his miserable circumstances. Knowing the book has a happy ending dulls any distress reading about the author's struggles or George's sad early life. With dry wit and a lack of sentimentality, the author maintains reader investment. His unpretentiousness and the struggles that preceded his eventual (and well-deserved) success keep this Cinderella story gritty and grounded.
A disarmingly modest yet profound tale of redemption.Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4683-1120-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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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