Group dynamics and danger make for an engaging African adventure.
Nearly two decades ago a young Irish lad signed on for a trans-Africa adventure. Here he details his journey from Ramsgate to the Indian Ocean.
TV documentarian Magan (Angels and Rabies: A Journey Through the Americas, 2007, etc.) started his globetrotting career at the tender age of 20, when he took his life savings of £1,000 and embarked on a truck ride from Casablanca to Mombasa. He and 18 fellow travelers headed south from Morocco across the desert, then due east from Togo through Darkest Africa to Kenya. This troupe of strangers on a six-month journey of discovery looked less like Stanley’s band of explorers and more like performers in an odd replay of Lord of the Flies. Among the diverse cast bouncing along in the old truck were nurses on holiday, an athletic Lothario, a military type and a nubile London girl. None seemed to have made any progress in emotional maturity since junior high. On the road, they picked up additional extravagant figures like sex-starved Englishwoman Salade and hard-partying shepherd Mustafa. Taking occasional leave of his group to sample native food, drugs, djinns and dalliance, the author showed scarce concern for the very real dangers of AIDS. The pleasures of sexual byplay and innuendo were dampened here and there by angry crowds, avaricious border guards and venal military police. Their guide Suzi tended to abandon the wayfarers when the going got tough. Through domains of dictators, robbed of money, passports and food, sick and starving in the Heart of Darkness, the author and his fellows encountered pygmies, an albino and eventually some Peace Corps workers who came to their aid. A terrible time was had by all. Yet, resting under a baobab tree, Magan reflected on his adventure and was glad he had taken the road trip of a lifetime.
Group dynamics and danger make for an engaging African adventure.Pub Date: April 23, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-86322-389-1
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Dufour
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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