A pleasant and chatty odyssey through northern Spain and the memories of a thoughtful wayfarer.
A debut memoir recounts a 500-mile journey of self-discovery in the footsteps of St. James the Greater.
One man’s struggle with—and solution to—the depression that dogged him is the subject of DeVaney’s book, the chronicle of a six-week pilgrimage to visit relics of the patron saint of Spaniards. A Roman Catholic from the cradle with a fondness for European adventures, the author decided on a walk along Spain’s Camino de Santiago after being moved by Emilio Estevez’s depiction of such a trek in his film The Way. DeVaney’s odyssey began in the foothills of the Pyrenees in the town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Not all of his fellow travelers looked friendly at first glance, but the author soon came to understand the “pilgrim glare,” made up of “pain from the day’s walk and uncertainty regarding where you are and where you would be staying that evening.” A good sport throughout it all, DeVaney notes but does not linger on the hard beds, mediocre food, and long days of muddy hiking in the rain. He found great pleasure in the companionship of the scores of fellow explorers he dined with, walked alongside, and slept among, but, even more, he treasured his time alone. The author met actors, journalists, retired stockbrokers, and a cellist with a documentary film crew in tow. As he wandered on foot, he reflected on some of the more amusing (and, occasionally, heartbreaking) stories of his years as an altar boy, police officer, and realtor. DeVaney is a solid researcher and well-informed traveler, providing brief and engaging histories of the places he visited (Hemingway’s escapades in Pamplona; El Cid’s exploits in Burgos). Indeed, there is little casual readers might want to learn about such a pilgrimage that the author fails to skillfully relate. He clearly took meticulous notes along the way, and he incorporates them here with care. DeVaney vividly recounts that the trip lived up to its spiritual promise, offering time for him to contemplate the meaning of his life and the multitude of small blessings he read as “winks” from God (“I would often look up at the sky and wink back as a big thank-you”).
A pleasant and chatty odyssey through northern Spain and the memories of a thoughtful wayfarer.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-974670-81-9
Page Count: 197
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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