Thompson has fallen under the spell of the breathtakingly beautiful (as she repeatedly insists), seductive Diana, but...
A fresh look at six outrageous sisters.
There has been no lack of attention to the notorious Mitford sisters, including biographies of Unity Valkyrie Mitford, who, scandalously, adored Hitler; Diana, who married the outspoken fascist Sir Oswald Mosley; and writer Nancy, the subject of Life in a Cold Climate (2003) by Somerset Maugham Award winner Thompson herself (A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan, 2014, etc.). Added to those are family memoirs, collections of letters, and a previous group biography, Mary S. Lovell’s The Mitford Girls (2001). Yet for readers yearning for another take on the glamorous sisters’ “posh past,” Thompson’s smart, jaunty, and wittily entertaining book will amply fill their desire. Steeped in Mitford lore and mythmaking, the book offers sharply drawn portraits of each woman, teases out the complexities of their fraught, competitive relationships with one another, and sets their lives within the context of a radically changing world. “These girls are prize exhibits in a Museum of Englishness,” admits the author, but she shows how they were much more. Born between 1904 and 1920, the sisters grew up imbibing the etiquette of debutante balls and the personal consequences of global upheaval; their friends were the fey Bright Young Things, “sublimely clever aesthetes”; their enemies were legion. “Snobbery, shallowness, stupidity, adultery, unpalatability—the Mitfords were accused of all these things and rode out every criticism,” Thompson writes admiringly. They fervently believed they were exceptional, even Jessica, who rebelled vehemently against the family’s politics. Unity never married, and others chose startlingly unsuitable mates: Diana left her adoring, hugely wealthy, but unfortunately dull husband for the rake Mosley; and Pamela married opinionated, philandering bores; Jessica ran off with a communist, with whom she lived in poverty. Deborah, though, made a more suitable match, with an eminent duke who owned assorted castles.
Thompson has fallen under the spell of the breathtakingly beautiful (as she repeatedly insists), seductive Diana, but otherwise, her cleareyed view of the sisters’ strengths and foibles makes this gossipy story a delight.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-09953-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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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