Margaret Atwood's poetry is too good for the implicit condescension in the acclaim for her as a woman writing about women—and judging from her new book, she is getting better all the time. Her poems straddle the line where personal and general history meet. Even at her most intimate, she is—in the large—"The Woman Who Makes Peace With Her Faulty Heart": "We know that, barring accidents,/ one of us will finally betray the other." A 19th-century massacre of Quebecois by imported Scottish mercenaries also acquires a more general cast in her hands: "Those whose houses were burned/ burned houses. What else ever happens. . . ?/ . . . still hungry,/ they watched the houses die like/ sunsets, like their own/ houses. Again/ those who gave the orders/ were already somewhere else,/ of course on horseback." She is direct and scrupulously honest; her advice to her small daughter could be her own credo: "I would like to say, Dance/ and be happy. Instead I will say, in my crone's voice, Be/ ruthless when you have to, tell/ the truth when you can see it." Her work is not without flaws or faults: often predictable last lines; the mannered use of pause or full stop in the middle of a line, followed by an apparently pointless enjambment ("Nothing stays free, though on what ought/ to be the lawn. . ./ . . ./ outside the wire, there's the dying/ rose hedge. . ."). But when she is in top form—as in "Marrying the Hangman," a subtly political portrait of gender and power—she establishes her fight to be taken very seriously indeed.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1981
ISBN: 0671253700
Page Count: -
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1981
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
BOOK REVIEW
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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