A bit unpolished, but a quick-moving account of a nomadic life.
In this debut memoir, a Canadian man looks back on his 17 globe-spanning years in the hospitality industry, from bartender to maître d’.
In the two years between dropping out of school and taking a bartending course at age 20, Nicolle had held more than 25 jobs, including janitor, truck driver and assembly-line worker at an automotive plant and a wallpaper factory. He’d flunked tests for the police force and the Armed Forces. So why bartending? Nicolle liked to travel and he liked to drink; he hoped to meet girls; and “After all,” he writes, “I figured that I only live once.” This decision led to a life of rootless travel; on leaving Canada, he writes, “It would be ten years before I owned another car. Eight years before I would have my own address again. Ten years before I would own any furniture.” Bouncing from country to country, ski resort to private club to cruise ship, hard-working Nicolle improved his skills along the way, such as learning French and taking a Cordon Bleu pastry course. Not all of his decisions were successful, such as his attempt to join the Canadian Navy (he washed out in basic training). But often Nicolle’s gambles paid off, as with working at an exacting Swiss hotel: “[M]ost of all I learned that when it comes to service there is never any room for excuses.” Nicolle does a good job weaving his tangled back-and-forth travels into a coherent narrative and is especially interesting when talking about the nuts and bolts of what bartenders, waiters and maître d’s actually do. The memoir could use some editing (for example, eliminating unnecessary use of the phrase “you could say”), and Nicolle can be overly offhand; a funny waiter “would have us bent over laughing so hard. Some of his jokes I still remember to this day.” Well? Usually, though, Nicolle’s conversational style works, and he has some good, pithy lines to offer: “In Switzerland, perfection is a requirement.”
A bit unpolished, but a quick-moving account of a nomadic life.Pub Date: June 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1460238981
Page Count: 144
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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