A quick, lighthearted read about the trials of unrequited love and platonic friendship.
In this short debut memoir spanning just one year, Pascal depicts the progress of a romantic relationship.
Pascal meets Simon through a close friend, and she quickly falls in love. She’s mesmerized by Simon’s artistic aura and his connection to nature, and finds herself inspired and creatively charged by his presence. Early on, Simon suggests that they find a type of relationship that allows their love to remain undying and unconditional, similar to the way a writer finds the perfect genre for an idea. But Pascal’s feelings are hurt when she witnesses Simon’s affection for others, and she feels stung that Simon would flirt with another woman or want to enjoy the company of other friends without her. However, she soon realizes that her feelings and behavior are unjustified; she’s losing herself as a person whom others might enjoy and befriend. As she goes through a journey of growth and understanding, she discovers the hard truth that sometimes romantic chemistry isn’t shared by both parties in a friendship. She feels pain and longing after losing Simon as a romantic partner, but she comes to terms with the fact that one cannot force another person to become one’s mate. This memoir rolls through a series of dinners, parties and conversations with friends, and is sometimes unexciting in its recounting of quotations and emotions. However, it effectively highlights the moments and conversations most important to the author, and ends on a satisfying, positive note. It will likely appeal most to readers who have experienced heartache themselves, with its message that real love, if true, flows freely both ways.
A quick, lighthearted read about the trials of unrequited love and platonic friendship.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466392601
Page Count: 96
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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