A bittersweet, unvarnished portrait of a mother’s strength and decline.
A mixture of family history and memoir, Duncan’s debut honors her 94-year-old mother, Marguerite, who struggles with dementia.
Duncan is a direct descendant of Peter Butler, who left America in 1829 and helped establish an all-black Canadian settlement, Wilberforce Colony. The author hopes to preserve her family heritage by recording memories of life in Canada, which fill the first half of the memoir. Many of the vignettes are tinged with humor. When Duncan was little, Mom—who wanted a new couch—told her to jump on the couch on Dad’s side until the springs poked through. After Dad sat on the exposed springs, he promptly bought that new couch. Duncan’s descriptions of her hardworking mother are loving: “She was the person someone would call whenever something needed repairing. It would never be too much trouble to drive a neighbour to the store or take them to their doctor’s appointment.” The second half of the book focuses on Marguerite’s illness. Here, the author conveys her acute stress and sadness as her mother’s disease progressed and she placed her in long-term care. The author’s experiences run the gamut, from bringing Mom home for Christmas to Marguerite’s biting an aide on the hand. Duncan ends with a miscellany of advice; e.g., “Don’t be shy about asking for or accepting help.” The simply told narrative is a heartbreaker, but Marguerite’s spirited personality and resourcefulness are notable; e.g., she could sew a replica of a designer outfit just by looking at it in the store. This isn’t a comprehensive guide but an authentic glimpse into the trials of caregiving. Several striking black-and-white photos of family members (past and present) are included.
A bittersweet, unvarnished portrait of a mother’s strength and decline.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-7128-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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