An erotic memoir that explores self-revelation (both witting and unwitting) with laughter and sighs.
A young South African woman traces the story of her life through 26 men she has bedded.
Debut author Prinsloo had always been a bit precocious. As a girl in Johannesburg, she tried to kiss at least one boy for every letter of the alphabet. In college, her horizons expanded, and by the time she worked as a banker and lived on her own, her little black book had grown voluminous. This volume is that little book, only annotated and dramatized. As Prinsloo’s life unfolded, she became “Miss Popularity amongst men of all ages, shapes, and sizes.” First there was Abia, who comforted her where her brother was killed in a crash, and with whom she “tested new positions that Cosmopolitan’s editors would pay good money to depict and write about.” Then there’s Herseney, who had her screaming “sopranos, octaves, and high decibels.” He impregnated three other women, was forced to marry one, but snuck off from his reception to visit Prinsloo once more. There was Aziz—much older and less attractive than represented online—but “the ugly old man was a good kisser.” More than once, Prinsloo found “the one” only to meet with heartache or misfortune. Readers will be entertained by the carnality of the author’s appetites and worried about her during hard times. Prinsloo does a nice job of catching up her non–South African readers on the tricky racial politics of growing up, and going out as a “colored,” or mixed-race woman. The various men do blend together in spots, though for the most part, Prinsloo draws each character distinctly (including a bit of rough language for her fellow femmes fatales—some are “harlots,” some are “skanks”). Occasionally, a character’s motivation may seem unclear or the author’s behavior contradictory. More than a few readers are bound to identify either with the protagonist or with her variously lucky and unlucky conquests.
An erotic memoir that explores self-revelation (both witting and unwitting) with laughter and sighs.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5049-8928-2
Page Count: 246
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2016
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
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