An uplifting tale of domestic martyrdom, told with a remarkable lack of self-pity, that forces us to put our own sorrows...
A paean to a housewife in a small Midwestern town who saved her ten children from homelessness by winning hundreds of jingle-writing contests during the 1950s and ’60s.
San Francisco Chronicle contributor Ryan describes her impoverished childhood in a close-knit Irish Catholic family, revealing how her mother Evelyn’s optimistic spirit counterbalanced her father’s reign of terror. A talented writer, Evelyn sacrificed her promising career when she married Kelly, an alcoholic who squandered his wages while denying his ten children the basic necessities of life. As a result, the family finances depended on Evelyn submitting witty prose to product promotions contests and winning grocery shopping sprees or expensive appliances (which were then sold) to stave off hunger. (Ryan cites some of her mother’s epigrams, which sing the praises of Pepsodent, Sealy, and Paper Mate, throughout her fast-paced narrative.) Evelyn made researching contests part of her daily routine and managed to win pretty much anything the family needed—including money for health insurance. Her grueling life, full of housework and devoid of friends, was redeemed mainly by the love of her children, who worshipped her. Although this has all the ingredients of a sob story, Ryan balances her tales of childhood trauma with humorous anecdotes about babysitting accident-prone children and wrestling irascible chickens. She also recalls how her mother finally developed a social life with other housewives who, although not as financially unfortunate as Evelyn, also managed to fill their cookie jars with the proceeds of advertising contests.
An uplifting tale of domestic martyrdom, told with a remarkable lack of self-pity, that forces us to put our own sorrows into perspective.Pub Date: April 4, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-1122-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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