Engaging prose and entertaining stories hampered by a lofty, overly cerebral premise.
An Anglo-Afghan world traveler searches his adopted Moroccan homeland for traditional stories to pass on to his children.
Shah (The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca, 2006, etc.), a gentle-voiced travel writer with a restless spirit, opens the book with a bang. Strung up by his feet in a Pakistani torture chamber called “The Farm”—into which he was thrown while attempting to make a film about the lost treasure of the Mughals—he distracted himself with thoughts of telling bedtime stories to his small children. Timur and Ariane were safely ensconced at home in the family’s sprawling, possibly haunted compound, Dar Khalifa, the Caliph’s house, which sits on the edge of a Casablanca shantytown where the author had moved his family in a fit of nostalgia for his childhood vacation spot. Shah’s thoughts take us back to Morocco, and his personal quest for authentic personal storytelling, which led him across the country and ingratiated him to a host of colorful characters. On the homefront, he introduces a trio of superstitious groundskeepers and two maids who competed for the affections of his toddler son. Outside of Dar Khalifa’s walls, the cast grew even more diverse. In Moroccan culture, particularly for a man with Shah’s curious blend of Eastern and Western sensibilities, it seemed that friends were around every corner—in the Café Mabrook, where the author quickly became a regular, in the barbershop and even in a small hut behind a cemetery. It was these friendships that fueled the author’s mission, taking him not only through the Old Medina of Casablanca, but also to Fez, Marrakesh and even deep within the Sahara Desert. Spurred by the writings of 19th-century British explorer and polymath Richard Francis Burton—he even stayed in Burton’s favorite Tangier hotel—Shah continued to search for an authentic legacy for his son and daughter. The author’s cultural detail is impressive, and his relentless fascination with all things Moroccan is inspirational. But the storytelling theme never quite unifies his anecdotes. More disappointingly, he never regains the raw energy of the opening torture-chamber episode where, it seems, the real story resides.
Engaging prose and entertaining stories hampered by a lofty, overly cerebral premise.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-553-80523-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
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
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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