Anyone who has cared for aging and ill parents will recognize and perhaps be comforted by this frank delineation of the...
From SF novelist Charnas (The Conquerer's Child, 1999, etc.), a true and tender account of caring for her aging father from the time of his truculent arrival at her home to his irascible last illness and death.
Robinson McKee left his wife and children when Suzy was only eight to live the bohemian life of a painter in Greenwich Village. Although they were in touch over the years, this was a man the author “barely knew” when she invited him in 1973 to leave his rundown New York studio to live with her and her husband in New Mexico. Robin would have his own house on her Albuquerque property and a view of the Sandia mountains bathed in the extraordinary southwestern light. He came, and for nearly 20 years Charnas struggled to know him, please him, laugh at his jokes, get him to paint, exercise, take a bath, and, finally, to let him die. He spent his last year in a nursing home, where a miracle of sorts occurred. He fell in love with a patient, Jane, who returned his affection; they spent their days together, with Robin often ensconced in Jane's wheelchair by her bedside. He mellowed and spruced up his grooming, ate better, and, encouraged by Jane, voted in a presidential election for the first time. He died in January 1993, leaving Charnas with his cat and 40 volumes of journals that he kept from 1930 until a few years before he moved in with her. The author makes good use of entries from these journals, full of amusing, brittle, sad, and hopeful anecdotes and musings, epigrams, and reflections on art and life. She intersperses them among her own memories and journal excerpts to capture the mix of guilt, longing, impatience, and empathy that characterized their relationship.
Anyone who has cared for aging and ill parents will recognize and perhaps be comforted by this frank delineation of the mixed emotions called up by the death of a father.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-58542-185-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
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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