Promising, but hampered by jejune subject matter, Daum fails to hit her target.
A Manhattan-centric, playful collection of essays from a young writer searching for authenticity in a material world.
Born in 1970, Daum (whose essays have appeared in the New Yorker and Harper’s) introduces herself as a Gen-Xer in desperate pursuit of the poshness associated with Manhattan’s elite. These ten essays focus primarily on the author’s life—the trivial world of an egotistical, self-proclaimed shiksa—ranging from subjects like Visa card debt to online romance to her aversion to wall-to-wall carpeting. Daum’s candid voice is at once engaging, blithe, and pretentious as she describes her determination to attend Ivy League schools, where she happily assimilated into the highbrow culture of her wealthy classmates. Readers who abandoned suburban homes to pursue low-paying glamour professions in the Big Apple may relate to living in denial (of student loans) and in hope (of finding an affordable apartment), but Daum’s endless whining about her inability to live within her means will tax anyone’s patience in short order. Her choice of topics reveals her youth—many essays seem to emerge from her school experiences. She’s at her best when recalling unique and highly personal events, such as her romantic expectations of the infatuated fan who contacted her via e-mail, and the seemingly heartless way in which she reacted to the death of an underachiever friend. The two journalistic pieces (one concerning the unconventional lives of American flight attendants, the other on a Northern California cult that justifies promiscuity with homespun spirituality) aim for shock value but fall flat as she rambles, incongruously, about her childhood recollections of practicing the oboe, destroying her baby dolls, and flirting with Jewish boys.
Promising, but hampered by jejune subject matter, Daum fails to hit her target.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-890447-26-9
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Open City
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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