A wise, funny look behind the curtains of a family that, it would seem, has little to be ashamed of.
Of family secrets, roads not taken, private failings, and other incidents that induce shanda, the Yiddish word for shame.
Pogrebin, a prolific author and co-founder of Ms. magazine, begins this lively memoir with her four grandparents, who “produced a combined fourteen offspring, who, in turn, birthed twenty-five children, including me, a cast of characters with enough secrets to fill this book twice over.” Once is plenty, as the author’s family dammed up a flood of scandalous secrets that have kept her guessing for decades. The sense of shame that propels her stories is amplified by the idea that Jews are often expected to live “morally upright, socially useful, and professionally exemplary” lives, and its effects are far-reaching. When Bernie Madoff went to prison for fraud, destroying the financial lives of some 37,000 people, one son killed himself, another died of shanda-born lymphoma, another went to prison, and Madoff’s widow went into hiding and tried to kill herself. “I didn’t lose a penny with him, but I, too, felt his swindle to be a blight on the Jewish collective,” writes the author. Though not nearly as venal, Pogrebin’s family skeletons in the closet are real: She hid a brain tumor from old friend Alan Alda out of shame for being ill, for example, and a grandmother was a runaway bride, thus committing “the heinous sin of publicly shaming a man.” In addition, changes of name run throughout the generations to disguise Jewishness in a strange land, “which, I submit, proves that hiddenness, especially hiding one’s true identity, is associated with Jews in particular and explains why I think of shame and secrecy as quintessentially Jewish issues.” Pogrebin writes with sympathy and affection of these and other foibles, some more and some less serious, whether letting a son skip college to go to culinary school or confessing that she panicked when “one of my daughters almost married a Catholic.”
A wise, funny look behind the curtains of a family that, it would seem, has little to be ashamed of.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63758-396-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A charming and often poignant valediction from rock ’n’ roll’s Prince of Darkness.
The late heavy metal legend considers his mortality in this posthumous memoir.
“I ain’t ready to go anywhere,” writes Osbourne in the opening pages of his new memoir. “It’s good being alive. I like it. I want to be here with my family.” Given the context—Osbourne died on July 22, 2025, two weeks after the publisher announced the news of this book—it’s undeniably sad. But the rest of the text sees the Black Sabbath singer confronting the health struggles of his last years with dark humor and something approaching grace. The memoir begins in 2018; he wrote an earlier one, I Am Ozzy, in 2010. He tells of a staph infection he suffered that proved to be the start of a long, painful battle with various illnesses—soon after, he contracted a flu, which morphed into pneumonia. A spinal injury caused by a fall followed, causing him to undergo a series of surgeries and leaving him struggling with intense pain. And then there was his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, the treatment of which was complicated by his longtime struggle with alcohol and drug addiction. Osbourne peppers the chronicle of his final years with anecdotes from his past, growing up in Birmingham, England, and playing with—and then being fired from—Black Sabbath, and some of his most well-known antics (yes, he does address biting the heads off of a dove and a bat). He writes candidly and regretfully about the time he viciously attacked his wife, Sharon—the book is in many ways a love letter to her and his children. The memoir showcases Osbourne’s wit and charm; it’s rambling and disorganized, but so was he. It functions as both a farewell and a confession, and fans will likely find much to admire in this account. “Death’s been knocking at my door for the last six years, louder and louder,” he writes. “And at some point, I’m gonna have to let him in.”
A charming and often poignant valediction from rock ’n’ roll’s Prince of Darkness.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781538775417
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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