A resentful, angry woman shares her feelings about the sheer awfulness of taking care of a severely disabled husband. Cohen, a profesor of mathematics at Temple University, describes the years from 1977, when her husband, a physicist, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, to mid-1988, when he could no longer transfer himself to and from a wheelchair, as a period of stress; ``dire straits'' is the term she uses for the next six years, during which she cared for him at home. Her ordeal, but not his, ended with his placement in a nursing home. A believer in speaking one's mind, she let those around her know loudly, clearly, and frequently how she felt about being in a situation she could not abide. Most of her anger is directed at what she calls the conspiracy of silence among doctors, social workers, and therapists who know but do not acknowledge the burdens of the care-providing spouse, but there's plenty left for the friends and relatives who she felt did not help enough. For Cohen, being the care-giving spouse can be summed up in three words—nights, lifting, and toilet—and she elaborates fully on what these involve. By writing all the dirty details, she hopes to keep herself from ever forgetting what it was like, as well as to convince society that changes in home health care must be made. The latter may be too much to hope for. Although one might want to feel sympathy for someone in Cohen's situation, her temper and sarcasm, combined with her total commitment to self-expression (``It's not my job to hide what I'm feeling'') make it difficult to feel much compassion for this particular woman. Twenty-four black-and-white photographs provide stark documentation of the Cohen family's ordeal. A bitter and ugly little book.
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-56639-425-2
Page Count: 167
Publisher: Temple Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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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