A revealing look at hospital life written with affection and clarity.
A Philadelphia-based nurse recalls her day-to-day life tending to the sick and dying in this unflinchingly honest debut memoir by Turnage.
In 1969, 17-year-old Susan Turnage was given her first task as a student nurse: to bathe a male patient. The words of her intimidatingly strict instructor rang in her ears: “Make sure you wash the groin area.” Once behind the bedside curtain, she confessed to her patient that she had never seen a man naked before. Her patient was equally embarrassed about having someone other than his wife bathe him. The two made a pact: “I do the pits, he does the parts.” Over the course of her career, Turnage collected a satchel full of stories about her interactions with patients. When working at a correctional facility, one of her first jobs was to provide advice on how to deal with an inmate who had a showerhead stuck in his rectum. Many stories are truly heartbreaking, such as that of Connie, a 15-year-old patient who had become pregnant after being sexually abused by her uncle, leading to a home-induced abortion using cola and lye that went horribly wrong. Turnage’s writing displays an effervescent, almost slapstick humor. When a patient jokes that she is spilling a bedpan, Turnage has the last laugh: “I opened my eyes wide and headed right for him, feigning a stumble and saying, ‘Woah, look out! I am carrying a big load.’ ” Turnage never holds back when describing a patient’s condition, and the results can be gruesome. When describing a wound on a patient’s foot, she writes: “maggots swarmed in the tennis ball-sized heel crater.” Some readers may find the writing shockingly blunt whereas others will see the matter-of-fact approach as a reflection of the realities of nursing. The memoir is given an extra dimension with a chapter entitled “Zero to Ten”; its opening considers a patient’s perspective: “The moment your butt hits the hospital bed, normal life disappears.” The result is a multitextured memoir that evokes a spectrum of emotions. Furthermore, this book gives those considering a career in nursing a strong sense of whether the profession is truly for them.
A revealing look at hospital life written with affection and clarity.Pub Date: June 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4575-6742-1
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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
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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