In failing health, a mildly schizophrenic mail room clerk retires at the urging of his boss, entrusts his care to his older sister, suffers an endless assortment of physical maladies, then three years later dies. Here, his sister remembers.
Contino (Born to Create, 2007) starts her memoir promisingly enough. She writes in the first few pages of the pain she felt when she was invited to the wedding of a close friend’s daughter, but her troubled brother, Bob, was not. Shortly afterward, Bob’s closest friends abandoned him when, at 23, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. As Bob’s sister and caregiver, Contino saw a side of the disease few people understand. Readers might rightfully expect her to pull back the curtain, yet she leaves them in the dark. After offering a few sketchy details of her brother’s diagnosis, she seems to forget that he had schizophrenia. She writes of his unwillingness to pay more than $20 for anything and his refusal to follow doctors’ orders. At times, she shows him to be embarrassingly crude, but as he ages, little in her portrayal suggests he was different from every other grumpy old man—which might be her point. Muddy sentences might irk readers further: “Maybe that was the time I was taking my brother back and forth to the doctor because the medication wasn’t working.” Contino’s greatest strength in an otherwise unsatisfying read is her re-creation of dialogue. Through conversation, Contino conveys the frustration she felt repeatedly imploring Bob to accept medical help as well as the helplessness he felt being put through countless treatments and tests: “ ‘Have mercy on me. Please, have mercy” he screamed over and over until the drug took its effect.”
Startlingly close seat to a man’s ill-starred life, but vague details and poor grammar obstruct the view.
Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1434928405
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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