A love-filled eulogy to a beloved husband and the special times the couple shared before he died.
A memoir about how the author coped with her husband’s sudden death.
In her seriocomic debut, Palm Beach Post entertainment columnist Streeter pays tribute to her husband, Scott, by sharing detailed stories about their life together and her many struggles dealing with his death. Because Scott was white and Jewish and the author is black and Baptist, religion, racism, integration, and acceptance are significant topics throughout the narrative. For the first few months after his death, Streeter was overcome by grief as she had to pick Scott’s coffin (a “lovely, Jewish-law-compliant pine box”), choose the appropriate spot to bury him and which dress to wear to the funeral, and, most importantly, figure out how to tell their son, almost-2-year-old Brooks, whose adoption was nearly complete, that “Daddy’s not actually working late.” The author also shares her insecurities about weight and overeating, the intense exercise program she endured to get back in shape after binging, how she drank to avoid the pain, and the necessity of relying on her mother, who had also recently lost her husband. Although Streeter’s humor occasionally feels forced, her grief, lucidly portrayed, is tangible, and it’s clear writing about her difficult experiences proved cathartic to her and to those who know her and Scott and their relationship. The most moving part of the book, divided into chapters such as “Grief Cake,” “Healing: It’s Like Putting Eyeliner on a Baby,” and “You’re Gonna Make it After All,” concerns the author’s continued hopes and fears regarding the final adoption of their son, a narrative thread that culminates in a heartwarming verdict by the judge. Her resilience in the face of devastating loss is commendable, and while the book isn’t a top-shelf memoir about grief, Streeter’s candid exploration will resonate with those who have dealt with similar circumstances.
A love-filled eulogy to a beloved husband and the special times the couple shared before he died.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-49071-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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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