Somber, haunting stories that resonate with compassion, eloquence, and metaphor. Once again, Endo (Foreign Studies, 1990, etc.) explores the themes for which he is famous: Roman Catholics in Japan, the illness and fear of aging, the pain of divorce, the loneliness of childhood. In this collection of 11 stories written over the last 30 years, autobiography continues to take a front seat: Endo finds inspiration in his own experience with lung disease to address physical suffering; in his parents' loveless relationship to address loss of innocence and compromise; in his own experience with Christianity to address, as the apostate in the almost epic title story, the question of whether or not it is all right to be afraid and run away from a commitment to Christianity in the face of persecution; and in his increasing age to tackle nostalgia, regret, and resignation. To make these heavy topics even murkier, they often overlap in ways that would be overwhelming to someone without Endo's fresh and gentle touch. Spiritual decline feels natural as ``A Fifty-year-old Man,'' a disillusioned husband, offers an almost comic look at watching his dog die a slow death. In ``Shadows,'' it's a relief when a writer finally understands that he doesn't understand the priest who was his childhood mentor, nemesis, and betrayer. And we recognize the writer in ``The Box'' who follows the trail of postcards he finds in an antiques shop to discover love, betrayal, and espionage while wondering if ``perhaps I think up such nonsensical, irrational things because I am getting old.'' What might otherwise feel like giving up becomes giving in to the unrecognized power of the human condition. This is the precious uncertainty of all of Endo's delicate dreams. A strange celebration of life and death that is wise but never weary.
Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1994
ISBN: 0-8112-1272-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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.
