Steamy life of Madonna, who comes off both worse and better than you might expect. King (Everybody Loves Oprah!, 1987, etc.) seemingly has felt no need to go beyond scissors-and-paste in this thinnish bio, since Madonna herself in various interviews furnishes him with enough hot quotes to fuel his pages. Nor is he expert on her music. Still, we are faced here with a gifted human being whose relentlessly graphic honesty breaks conventions like so many arm bones. Raised in a strict Catholic family in Michigan, Madonna has said, ``I grew up with two images of women: The Virgin and the Whore.'' She studied dance, was told by her gay ballet teacher that she had a ``face like an ancient Roman statue,'' which gave her a fix on her beauty. Dropping her college career at Ann Arbor to accept a job with the Alvin Ailey dance troupe in New York, she then landed a soft-porn film job and did some nude modeling (photos that later surfaced in Playboy and Penthouse). Her ``Burning Up'' (sexually) video boosted her onto MTV (``Unlike the others, I'll do anything/I'm not the same, I have no shame,'' go the lyrics). Meanwhile, she apparently stepped over the bodies of those who helped her. Her biggest break came as a kooky lead in Desperately Seeking Susan, followed by a failed marriage to Sean Penn. Her role as Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy brought her $14 million in album sales, more than her part-time lover Warren Beatty made as Tracy. Her Truth or Dare film finds her rawly frank about sex, as does her Rolling Stone interview with Carrie Fisher: ``I don't like blow jobs. [I like] getting head.'' The story of a monstrous talent who will say anything—if it's true—and gains our sympathy for it. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Dec. 16, 1991
ISBN: 0-688-10389-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1991
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
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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