A Great White North pundit altogether too nice for south of the border.
Canadian journalist Pearson (When She Was Bad, 1997, etc.) offers some mildly amusing, finally innocuous comments on organic foods, daycare and surviving motherhood.
Pearson’s gently satiric essays, many originally published in the National Post, seem to have lost their stringency this far south, where debates on carcinogenic foods, the invasion of privacy by credit departments and the evils of daycare have been swirling around for years. Written in a punchy, bulleted style meant for easy digestion, Pearson’s flippant pieces excoriate the newfangled (American) way of food efficiency in favor of old-fashioned cooking: e.g., microwave popcorn’s “flavor vapors” may cause cancer, so she offers the cheaper kernel-pot method. For Christmas, she eschews annoying electronic toys for her two small children in favor of such home-style devices as a stick, the cat and toilet paper. She has rejected the “hostile little ecosystem of female rivalry, with a smell of sugar-coated bitchiness,” also known as the department-store beauty department, and now frequents a barbershop for a $15 haircut. To mitigate the guilt of dumping children in daycare, Pearson “researched” biographies of some famous people who grew up under surrogate parents (Elizabeth I, Jane Austen) and concludes, “Studies show that thinking of oneself as a semi-divine being can often compensate for decapitated or working mother.” The substantial last section takes place in the village of Tepoztlan, Mexico, where the author holed her family up for six months to find “simplicity,” and instead battled mangy dogs and importunate landlords. Frustrated by the language barrier, she offers some poignant remarks on being a new immigrant (she now sympathizes with New Canadians who bemoan the “Aura of Rank Stupidity” their beginning English conveys) and a very funny anecdote about visiting el dentista where “dolor” becomes “dollars.” Overall, Pearson’s voice is almost engagingly naïve, though her subjects are fairly derivative.
A Great White North pundit altogether too nice for south of the border.Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-58234-536-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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