On a quest to discover the origins of an exquisite embroidered robe and amulet she found in London, British textile expert Paine chronicles her journeys from Pakistan to Bulgaria through some of the world's wildest outposts of civilization. Determined to track down the source of a tribal dress that protects women against evil spirits, Paine ventures as a lone, vulnerable woman through remote areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Turkey, and Bulgaria she travels armed only with photos of the embroidery, five kilos of luggage, a bottle of vodka, the Afghan amulet around her neck, and cash sewn into her bra and socks. She wends her way by bus, jeep, and hitchhiker's luck through police checks and villages where camels and Kalashinkovs are everyday sights and women's embroidery and crimson sunsets are the only vibrancy in a barren rockscape. A widow in her 60s, Paine stays in homes with bullet-ridden mud walls and in hotels without water, electricity, bedding, phone, or cutlery where she barricades her door to keep out lecherous nocturnal visitors. Babies cry at the sight of her and men either pelt her with rocks or gallantly protect and then assault her. She sneaks into Iran through a Khomeini-crowned gate and is smuggled into Iraq, where Saddam has a bounty on Westerners' heads. Under the protective guises of widowhood, motherhood, and local costume, she enters women's domestic sanctums to view their handiwork. In lyrical prose she describes lands ravaged by extreme seasons and political turmoil, where men discuss nuclear weapons and dowries, and women, hidden by veils, have 18 children while supporting their families. Ultimately, Paine's textile quest, which is solved with a twist, merely provides a pretext for a fascinating and beautifully written account of an odyssey through extreme physical, cultural, and spiritual wildernesses. Paine displays the courage of a frontierswoman and the prose of a poet, making this indispensable for hearty travelers. (3 linecuts and 5 maps)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11236-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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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