A well-crafted, touching account of horror and fortitude.
A gripping tale that traces the unlikely survival of a Ukrainian teen during the Holocaust.
The atrocities of the Holocaust have provided the backdrop for many books and films, but few are as detailed and harrowing as Rekhtman’s stomach-churning account. Transcribed and translated from Russian by his grandson, this slim volume serves as the only record left of an entire Ukrainian village wiped out in 1942. While such a scenario often leads to heavy-handed sentimentalities and overwrought emotions, the author resorts to very few of those elements. Instead, readers are served a clear-eyed retelling of the cruelty and inhumanity that reigned during World War II. The story opens with a description of the secluded village of Kalyus, where Rekhtman was born and few of its 850 residents ever left. At 14, Rekhtman experienced a peaceful existence in which Jews and Ukrainians lived and worked together. Of course, this reality changed quickly when Communist officials fled during the night and rumors of German brutality toward Jews floated to the town. As the German army advanced into the Ukraine, the author’s neighbors and childhood friends began treating Jews with distrust and hate. A police unit arrived to enforce intense, useless labor such as moving snow from one side of the road to the other, on the Jewish residents. The author was transported to a labor camp where he worked in a stone quarry and became accustomed to constant beatings and starvation. His village was turned into a ghetto enclosed by barbed wire. When it was announced that the Kalyus ghetto was closed and everyone would be transported to another ghetto, none of the villagers realized that they were walking to their deaths until it was too late. Able-bodied people who could work were picked out, including the author’s father, uncle, great-uncle and his two sons. His father refused to leave his family and was shot by rounds of machine guns along with the rest of the village. With quick wit and a huge will to survive, Rekhtman evaded Nazi killing fields and death camps for four years, despite failing eyesight and an emaciated body. This story holds no bitterness or outrage but reveals the unfathomable strength of the human spirit.
A well-crafted, touching account of horror and fortitude.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-6152-1703-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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