One of those rare biographies of popular icons—in this case, the author of Rebecca—that puts truth-telling ahead of mudslinging or whitewashing. Authorized to write this life by the Du Maurier family, and drawing on hitherto unpublished letters—including a cache of previously unknown love letters between Du Maurier and actress Gertrude Lawrence—British novelist/biographer Forster (Lady's Maid, 1991; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1989, etc.) reveals a woman who, despite an appearance of happiness, was tortured by fears and disturbing ideas. Born into an illustrious family—her father was a noted actor-manager, her grandfather a celebrated artist and novelist—Du Maurier grew up in a lively London household where friends like J.M. Barrie and Edgar Wallace visited frequently. She was a moody, difficult child: Her mother was cold and aloof, and her father, whose closeness and attention she'd enjoyed as a child, became morbidly possessive as she grew older. Stunningly beautiful yet ill-at-ease in conventional company, Du Maurier was troubled by her awareness ``that there was no escape from being a girl [and that] she had forced herself to lock up in a box the boy she had at heart thought herself to be.'' Sexually attracted to women, she was also distinctly homophobic, a contradiction that would plague her throughout her life. Forster perceptively describes Du Maurier's affair with a lesbian French teacher; her marriage to ``Boy'' Browning, a famous general and subsequent member of the royal household; her relations with her three children; her great love for Gertrude Lawrence; and her writing, particularly Rebecca. Writing, it seems, not only allowed Du Maurier to be the family bread-winner but, more importantly, offered her release from her great ``fear of reality.'' She ``lived to write.'' Biography of the most exemplary kind, and, in its own way, as haunting an evocation of a troubled woman as Rebecca itself. (Thirty-three b&w photographs)
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-42068-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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