Bova, a staff member of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, reveals all she knows about Elvis, but her subject has been so intensely overexposed that even the most intimate details sound familiar. In 1969, in Las Vegas, Bova and a friend were hand-picked from a line of waiting show-goers to meet Elvis backstage. Bova believes that her instant rapport with the King grew out of the fact that she is a twin, as Elvis was, although his brother died at birth. Thus began her three-year relationship with a man who was obviously troubled and affected by giant mood swings. Though her own personality remains in the background, Bova manages a no-nonsense outlook and explains that she stood by her man because of love, even though he was married and had complete disregard for her career. Presley had some odd ideas about women: He was so insistent on purity that she hesitated to inform him that she was not a virgin (``In a way he was right, it would be `new' for me,'' she thought about her prospective sexual experience with him), and when Bova was pregnant (unbeknownst to him), he explained that once a woman had given birth he could no longer be attracted to her (she subsequently had an abortion). Presley's addiction to sleeping pills was a constant problem, but Bova had trouble confronting him about it and took them herself at his insistence. Bova also outlines the King's spiritual side, which involved vague, self- important beliefs that he was teaching people through music and that he was ``put here on earth to serve a special purpose'' with his unique powers. A somewhat pathetic portrait of the entertainer limping toward death. (16-page photo insert, not seen) (First serial to National Star; Literary Guild alternate selection)
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8217-4616-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
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
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