With the same no-nonsense vigor that is the hallmark of her historical novels for children, Sutcliff recalls her first 25 years—making only the most matter-of-fact references to her permanent crippling by Still's Disease, a rare form of juvenile arthritis. Born in 1920 in Surrey, Rosemary was forever shifting from place to place as a child: her quiet father was a naval officer, stationed in the Mediterranean ("To this day the name 'Malta' means bells to me"), then dockyards at Sheerness and Chatham. Her mother was Spartan, volatile, doting, difficult: "She was wonderful, no mother could have been more wonderful. But ever after, she demanded that I should not forget, nor cease to be grateful, nor hold an opinion different from her own, nor even, as I grew older, feel the need for any companionship but hers." Sutcliff remembers: sojourns with edgy relatives; beloved playmate Giles, imprisoned (like Rosemary at times) in his "spinal carriage," but peripatetic in his one hour of free exercise each day; terrible loneliness when isolated at home; useful stints at ordinary schools ("no child, I believe, should go to a special school who can possibly cope and be coped with in a normal one"); and grim/cheerful times at children's hospitals—where Rosemary was "the stranger whom the pack turns on." (Class-conflict was more primal than the shared experience of being handicapped.) Later came art school, with training—and technical success—as a portrait miniaturist. But "I could not cope with harsh realities in paint." So Rosemary, a late-reader who discovered book-ecstasy in L. M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon, developed "the itch to write"—an itch that was seriously deepened by her odd 1940s love (wondrous, hurtful) for ex-RAF man Rupert, who was interested in a mÉnage à trois. . . with a non-handicapped woman as the third party. Brief (140 pp.) but rich, frank but never sloppy: a crisp little gem for Sutcliff fans and connoisseurs of childhood-memoirs.
Pub Date: May 21, 1984
ISBN: 1906562008
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984
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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