Awkward writing aside, a compelling story of a strong, capable woman and the history that surrounded her.
An Irish educator examines the history of Ireland through the story of her grandmother’s life.
In Thorpe’s debut, she tells the life story of her grandmother Bridget O’Rourke, a remarkable woman who successfully raised a family through tough, turbulent years in Ireland. Bridget’s story is, in a way, that of Ireland as well: She grew up listening to her parents lament the lives of loved ones lost in the Famine, then worked for a wealthy man who traveled in Ireland’s literary and political circles; shelived practically next door to Oscar Wilde’s family home, experienced poverty and the effects of the Easter Rising in Dublin, and finally saw the effects of the Home Rule movement even out in the countryside. Bridget’s own life was eventful enough without the history of Irish independence occurring alongside it. She struggled with death, poverty and much more, taking control of her life at a young age and going on to raise seven children. Thorpe’s writing makes it easy to see why she found her grandmother such an inspirational figure. With so much going on, the book can sometimes feel rushed; any stage of Bridget’s life coupled with the story of what was going on in her country could have served as a solid biography. Instead, all the personal and historical events, sometimes in a textbook-style summary, can be overwhelming at times. The book is also full of repetition and awkward, stilted transitions, with inconsistent use of quotation marks when relating something Bridget must have said directly.However, there is a lot of history and a lot of heart here, making for a readable story and a solid lesson in the history of Ireland. Thorpe compellingly incorporates history into her grandmother’s story, always making sure to bring the narrative back to Bridget’s life and personal experience. Resources can be found at the end of the book, including works cited and an appendix of famous people, places and events from Ireland’s history, which add valuable information for readers whose interests are piqued by Bridget’s tale.
Awkward writing aside, a compelling story of a strong, capable woman and the history that surrounded her.Pub Date: July 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477131893
Page Count: 228
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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