Though it often reads like an extended society gossip column, the narrative is studded with enough trivia and name-dropping...
Journalist and screenwriter Greenfield (Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones, 2006, etc.) pens a eulogy for the 1960s with his portrayal of the ascent and downfall of two upper-class wanderers.
Descended from old money, 20-somethings Susan “Puss” Coriat and Tommy Weber lived off their trust funds, rubbing elbows with Britain’s elite as they discovered their callings—Tommy as a race-car driver, Puss as an actress. By 1964, the couple was married with two baby boys, and they soon fell into the drug experimentation of the mid-’60s. On a trip to the Greek islands with her children in tow, Puss suffered a schizophrenic episode. With her institutionalized, Tommy took charge of the children, soon befriending Keith Richards and staying with the Rolling Stones in France during the recording of Exile on Main St. It was the peak before the fall for both the ’60s and the lives of Puss and Tommy. By 1971, heroin and cocaine became the mainstays of a scene once limited to LSD and marijuana, and Tommy fell into heavy abuse. Puss, as happened with more than a few of the “European hippie jet-set scene,” committed suicide. Tommy then couch-surfed around Europe with his children, hanging out with stars and scammers, even cooking up plans to free Timothy Leary, then a fugitive in Switzerland. Fast-forward a couple decades. Son Jake became a well-known actor, starring in NBC’s Medium, while Charley became a musician and Web designer. After abusing his body for decades, Tommy died in 2006. To sum up the turbulent decade, the author visited Puss’ grave, writing that, along with her physical remains lies “the spirit of an age long since gone, a moment in time when those engaged in a grand social experiment did everything they could to break free from all constraints.”
Though it often reads like an extended society gossip column, the narrative is studded with enough trivia and name-dropping to engage ex-hippies and other fans of ’60s culture.Pub Date: May 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-306-81622-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
