Ardent dog lovers will be inspired by Morie’s dedication, but neither the story nor the prose is compelling enough to reach...
Journalist/novelist Sherrill (The Ruins of California, 2006, etc.) chronicles a man’s quest to save a nearly extinct native Japanese dog.
One of the earliest known species, Akita hunting dogs have long been revered in Japan as cornerstones of national culture, symbols of loyalty and pride. In the years following World War I, when Morie Sawataishi was growing up in the remote snow country, Akitas were plentiful. By the final years of World War II, as the navy veteran returned to the snow country with his young wife, Kitako, he found the breed nearly gone; Akitas had been trapped and killed for fur to line the officers’ uniforms. Morie was in the tiny village of Hachimantai to supervise the construction of hydroelectric plants for Mitsubishi. Life there was rustic and isolated. Kitako worked most of the day just keeping the fire stoked and the rice cooking; she longed for her family in Tokyo. Far from a doctor, the couple lost two of their six children to illness. But from the moment he acquired his first Akita in 1944, Morie’s primary attention was devoted to his dogs. Over the years, he raised hundreds of Akitas, lavishing them with rare affection and tender care. Among the most notable were Three Good Lucks, who won countless dog shows, and Homan, who fathered generations of puppies. Morie’s breeding, along with that of fellow enthusiasts, bolstered the population and made them popular again. Along with the dogs came a series of colorful characters, including a nomadic hunter who bonded with the couple and an Akita-obsessed X-ray technician who became Morie’s favorite trainer. As the century progressed, the snow country became more civilized, getting a hospital, electricity and high-speed trains, much to Kitako’s delight. But having spent a lifetime with Morie and the dogs, she had also begun to appreciate the value of the land and of the animals her husband helped to protect. Sherrill presents an interesting slice of life, but her writing is simplistic and her plotting lacks focus.
Ardent dog lovers will be inspired by Morie’s dedication, but neither the story nor the prose is compelling enough to reach beyond this specific audience.Pub Date: March 3, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59420-124-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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