The author of Sex and Other Sacred Games (1989) and In My Mother's House (1983) gives a breathless account of a series of sexual encounters she experienced on an Israeli kibbutz in the early 1970's—of possible interest only to those who were there. Living in Berkeley with an eight-year-old daughter and a kind, generous man who goes otherwise unmentioned in this account, 31- year-old Chernin suffered periods of debilitating depression for which she could imagine only one cure—a trip to Israel, where she hoped to establish a place for herself on a border kibbutz. Arriving in a straw hat, low-cut yellow blouse, long skirt and hand-made leather sandals, Chernin steps onto the grounds of the small, experimental kibbutz—whose members number around 60 and are nearly all under 30 years old—determined to make a splash. She proves her worth the first night by washing the communal dinner dishes ``like magic.'' She then plows through a series of other jobs over the next few weeks while initiating an affair with a confused young man named Simon. Now, 20 years later, Kim Chernin (or Kim's survivor, as the author now describes herself, the original Kim having spiritually expired by now) attempts to piece together, through letters, telephone calls, and reunions with several of those who were present, what went wrong on the kibbutz. She uncovers a story of romantic deceit and intrigue revolving around an affair between Chernin and one of the kibbutz's most popular female members. Chernin's descriptions of lovesick young farm workers chasing one another round and round the grounds would have provided excellent grist for Shakespeare's comic mill, but the author, sadly, fails to see the humor. Instead, she reminisces sentimentally about those footloose days, wonders whether she could still attract her former male lover, broods briefly over her daughter's happiness, and, most passionately, searches for Kim Chernin, her long-lost inner child. Spare us.
Pub Date: March 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-449-90522-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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