Despite too much mannered, precious prose, this is a collection offering plenty of small pleasures.
A painter’s meditation on his garden that mixes a bit too much lyricism with some original observations and knowledge of plants.
For most of us, coaxing a garden to grow is a humbling experience, but it apparently has the opposite effect on writers. Dash, a well-regarded painter and the author of a gardening column for the East Hampton [N.Y.] Star, presents his idiosyncratic opinions as philosophical or aesthetic profundities and indulges in turns of phrase that aim at haiku but generally achieve only oddity. His contemptuous dismissals of popular plants seem deliberately eccentric: the characterization of forsythia as “an absolute ass of a color, a greeny-yaller braying insult” sounds disingenuous, especially when he adds that “it is so nice” when the withered flowers drop from the bush and coat the ground. He also prides himself on his impatience with time-honored rules of thumb for weather prediction, assuming a tough, no-nonsense tone that imitates classic garden writer Eleanor Perényi. When Dash discusses garden design, however, he is clearly in his element, evoking colors, textures, and forms with the same precision and brilliance that characterize his paintings. Moreover, he is as attentive to practical function as he is to form; the essays on garden paths and benches exhibit common sense as well as keen powers of observation. He is at his best dealing with the least glamorous elements of the garden, providing unsentimental and eloquent accounts of the chores of pruning, manuring, and transplanting. An essay titled “Our Climate” argues by example that plant choice, placement, and planting methods should be determined by the demands of the particular locale, rather than by abstract principles. A long piece on the depredations of Hurricane Gloria, mourning the plants destroyed by the storm but affirming the garden’s eventual renewal, is garden-writing at its finest.
Despite too much mannered, precious prose, this is a collection offering plenty of small pleasures.Pub Date: June 20, 2000
ISBN: 0-618-01692-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
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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