A pleasant, if sometimes-monotonous, account that may appeal most to younger readers.
A memoir that recounts a young girl’s childhood adventures on the American prairie and her lifelong Christian faith.
Yexley (Not My Plan, 2015) pens a charming remembrance of growing up on a farm in Columbia, South Dakota, in the 1950s and ’60s, surrounded by loving family members and farm animals, and expressions of unwavering religious commitment. She writes about her early years of going to school, caring for animals, going on family drives through Nevada and California, and taking piano and cornet lessons; she also describes how the Vietnam War affected her small, intimate community. One particularly endearing chapter tells the story of the young author helping her grandmother take care of chickens, and in doing so, learning about responsibility, hard work, and finding lessons in her mistakes. She also learned about “dressing” chickens—preparing them for killing—and recalls the sadness of witnessing her first butchering. From a young age, she was protective of her younger sister, Yvonne, admired her older brother, Ray, and was fascinated by her grandparents’ many hobbies. Christianity plays a major part in many vignettes and it’s shown to have been an important component of her family’s daily struggles and successes. At the end of each chapter, she includes “Lessons Learned” and “Questions to Ponder,” such as “How do you overcome your fear?” and “Have you ever lost a pet?” However, these lessons and questions can sometimes feel reminiscent of those in children’s books. Overall, the memoir is overwhelmingly positive in tone. As a result, however, Yexley seems to gloss over some of the more serious moments of her childhood; for example, she only gently alludes to corporal punishment, poverty, and the isolation of middle America. She also has only complimentary things to say about each of her family members, and these purely positive descriptions render them somewhat colorless as characters. (Photos of the author’s family members are included throughout.)
A pleasant, if sometimes-monotonous, account that may appeal most to younger readers.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973603-26-9
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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.
