A sweet, wide-eyed, feel-good account about a family friend.
A debut memoir tells the story of a disabled friend who taught the author valuable life lessons.
In the late 1960s, Wiand’s family, which included seven children, moved to Carson City, Michigan, where the kids hoped to make new friends. Enter Eddie Lee—a good-natured, 15-year-old boy with developmental disabilities—who showed up at their door clutching a fistful of peacock feathers. This unique welcome turned into an enduring friendship, and the fun-filled adventures of Eddie became legendary in the author’s family. Affectionately dubbed “Fast Eddie” for the way he zoomed around town on his bicycle, he hadn’t always been so happy. He had been neglected as a baby, and starvation caused permanent brain damage and near blindness in one eye. Thankfully, a loving woman named Tilly convinced her husband that they should adopt him. Tilly taught Eddie how to ride a bike. He started riding it all over town, meeting new friends, collecting bottles to sell, and working odd jobs. And even though he was often bullied, Eddie managed to find joy in life. After growing up, Eddie and Wiand lost touch for more than 30 years, but then they reconnected in 2009. Elderly Tilly had been institutionalized, and Eddie was living with unscrupulous caregivers in horrible conditions. Not to worry—much like Fast Eddie, this often poignant account remains optimistic. Ten brisk chapters offer compelling Eddie anecdotes along with accompanying life lessons. For example, Chapter 6, “Treasure Everything,” tenderly describes how Eddie always had a pocket full of surprises—like arrowheads or a lucky rabbit’s foot—he’d found while neighborhood scavenging. Wiand urges readers to remember that real treasures don’t involve money. There’s some humor here, too. Chapter 2, “Believe In Yourself,” details how Eddie—despite the doubts of others—expertly drove the kids home from a lake after Grandpa got too drunk to handle the task. Regardless of the situation, Eddie’s a memorable guy, and—like curling up on the couch while eating ice cream and watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie—this smooth-flowing, heartwarming memoir is comforting.
A sweet, wide-eyed, feel-good account about a family friend.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9980223-0-7
Page Count: 130
Publisher: Carlysle & Lloyd Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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
© 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.
