A telling look into the pained hearts and confused minds of the mentally ill, by the author of The Dinosaur Man (1991). Baur operates in the belief that psychotherapy is a way of helping patients learn to construct better stories about their lives—more complete, coherent, and convincing stories that, in reinterpreting their pasts, also open up new paths for the future. This isn't a new theory, but she illuminates it by relating her attempts (not always successful) to do therapy with severely ill patients: the delusional, the hostile, the hopeless. Not only does Baur try to help her patients become better storytellers, but she, in her role as therapist, also exemplifies the art of listening at its best, finding the sense underneath seemingly incoherent ramblings. Her patients include suicidal Charlie Isabella, who tantalizes her with his gentle but rare smile, and Angie Savalonis, a wild woman who years earlier had lost her boyfriend in a motorcycle accident. But two-thirds of the way through her book, Baur veers off into a polemic against current modes of treatment— or mistreatment—of the mentally ill by therapists who impose their own stories on patients, labeling them ``aggressive,'' ``schizophrenic,'' and the like, instead of sounding out the source of their individual pain. Although she raises valid, even disturbing, issues, Baur loses her readers when she categorizes such patients as ``eccentrics'' rebelling against society's strictures. In the end it is the patients themselves who command our attention, for the almost poetic, and sometimes remarkably lucid, ways they have of describing their own torment. Frenetic T.M. bemoans the ``black crab nebula death'' that awaits him; institutionalized Rosina Venuto writes, ``I pray, but God is too smart to hang around this place;'' Lloyd Bartlett, semi-aware that his world is peopled with fantasy characters, says, ``It is extremely disconcerting to doubt the contents of your own mind.'' Better when practicing than when preaching, Baur is insightful, compassionate, and wise.
Pub Date: June 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-018238-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
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
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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