An eloquent and unsettling story of recovery that features solid advice and encouragement for other trauma victims.
Brooks debuts with a memoir of her struggle to recover from a traumatic assault.
On June 28, 2008, the 22-year-old author was living in Alexandria, Virginia, with her then-boyfriend and working at a prestigious accounting firm in Washington, D.C. That night, her boyfriend was out with friends, so she contacted a cousin who lived in Washington. After a night out, Brooks planned to spend the night at her cousin’s apartment until her boyfriend called and asked her to come home. Her cousin called a cab, and Brooks waited at the curb until a dark SUV pulled up; thinking it was her ride, she got in. Soon afterward, on the side of a deserted highway, the driver raped her, and he later dropped her off near her home. Brooks ran down her block screaming before her boyfriend and his friend met up with her. The police arrived and sent her to the local precinct, where she underwent hours of hostile questioning by detectives who dismissed her with an assurance that “this will all blow over and be fine. Best of luck.” On her own initiative, she went to the hospital to have a rape-kit examination performed, but the kit wasn’t processed for 18 months. In engaging, emotional prose that’s peppered with well-placed expletives, Brooks tells the infuriating story of her four-year quest to obtain some justice from the legal system and of her difficult journey to find peace within herself: “My life felt like scattered beads all over the floor from a broken clasp on a necklace,” she writes early on. With unvarnished honesty, she details her attempts to get her life back together; along the way, she struggled with alcohol abuse that led to blackouts and rages. She effectively tells of how broken she felt but also reveals her fierce determination to find normalcy and how her loved ones provided her with unflagging support.
An eloquent and unsettling story of recovery that features solid advice and encouragement for other trauma victims.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63393-966-0
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
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
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