This collection presents a vivid, yet often simplistic, perspective on a young person’s struggle with cancer.
This debut collection of biting, unsentimental and uneven monologues unfolds into the true story of one young woman’s battle with cancer.
While planning a move from Colorado, 27-year-old Luther discovers a painful lump in her left breast. She’s drifting between an unsatisfying job, recent heartbreak and plans to flee the West for New York City. The author has no family history of the disease, no other risk factors and no reason to suspect that—as she plots the next phase of her life—she is going to face overwhelming questions of mortality and a sharp, premature drift from youth brought about by cancer treatment and the uncertainties of remission. The monologues give voice to a wry, Gen-Y sensibility that is poignantly disarming—“I developed a crush on a fellow poison victim,” Luther writes of her attraction to another patient in the chemo treatment room. Still, her tone too often veers into pithy and snarky aspects of a 20-something’s glib concerns about the disease’s corporeal affects—“My hotness factor was pretty weak.” Just as the author seems to grapple with the depths of her diagnosis in the especially strong installments “I Love New York” and “Skeptical Looks,” those weighty moments devolve into increasingly vague observations about the everyday life of a cancer patient. Luther ponders soap operas, fairy tales and an orange Tic Tac, all clunky symbols of the protagonist’s slippery sense of vitality. Ultimately, her decision to deliver her experience in 19 small plays overwhelms the power of the narrative, forcing the author to cast about unsuccessfully for a dense and compelling story that might better be crafted in a book of creative nonfiction.
This collection presents a vivid, yet often simplistic, perspective on a young person’s struggle with cancer.Pub Date: June 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-0615484501
Page Count: 132
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© 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.
