Millett might have made this memoir into a gorgeous requiem for her longtime idol, her Aunt Dorothy, but in the end she reduces it to a tedious song for herself. The death of Millett's venerable and sophisticated aunt (jokingly referred to as A.D. by the author and her sisters) is the occasion for this indulgently digressive book. Bookish, young, and aspiring to greatness, Millett was for years infatuated with the wealthy, beautiful, and brilliant A.D. She desired her aunt romantically, loved everything about her, strove endlessly to please her, but then alienated her irredeemably by secretly taking a female lover to live with her when she went to study at Oxford. A.D. funded the education and forbade the lover, and when she uncovered her niece's deception, she never forgave her for the transgression or the lie. During their years of estrangement, Millett became an adult whom her aunt could never approve ofa lesbian, an artist, the author of controversial books (Sexual Politics, 1970, etc.). But she recognized the irony that these things never could have been possible without A.D.'s influence, mentorship, and money. Before the two ever make peace, A.D. dies alone in her giant house in Minneapolis, leaving Millett to cope on her own. A.D. is a tale of love, loss, and coming to terms that can move one to tears. But it can also make one howl in frustration, as A.D.'s story becomes a springboard for Millett to take measure of absolutely everything in her own life: her personal finances, the management of her women's art collective/Christmas tree farm, ruminations over lovers past, endless what-ifs. When Millett tells herself to finally ``let go'' in the book's closing lines, the reader is likely to concur.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-03524-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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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