A testament to the human spirit of perseverance in the face of danger and dislocation.
A depiction of the horrors of the second world war, as told largely through van Houten’s parents’ love letters and diary entries.
World War II has been the subject of more scholarly monographs and works of literature than readers could ever consume in a lifetime. In her debut effort, however, van Houten effectively plumbs the war’s meaning from a more personal perch. She pieces together letters between her mother and father, along with their diary entries, which were written while the conflict separated them. The correspondence begins in 1939, at the very beginning of the war, when Jan van Houten, a Dutch journalist, stayed behind in London to work while his family absconded for safer environs. The following May, the German Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands, and the Dutch government was temporarily exiled to England—defeated but struggling to maintain some sense of unity and morale. As the war progressed, van Houten's father wrote stirringly to his wife about bombings in London: “The sky overhead was dark red. It looked grand in all its terribleness.” The author, through her selections, shows how the Dutch had a renewed sense of hope after the Soviets defeated the Germans at Stalingrad and how they started preparing for an eventual return to power. Jan was recruited to work as a press officer in Brussels on the Dutch government’s behalf; he was officially in charge of censorship, delicately selecting the news in order to boost the spirits of a battered Dutch population. When he arrived in Eindhoven, though, he was shocked at the devastation, finding a land decimated and a people cowed. The author’s running commentary helpfully provides historical context, but she always allows the letters themselves to take center stage in the narrative. The epistles, written out of love and loneliness, reflect the emotional disturbance caused by a world in chaos. As a result, this is both an informative and an affecting tale, touchingly offered by a child of war.
A testament to the human spirit of perseverance in the face of danger and dislocation.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0692371138
Page Count: -
Publisher: The Cheyne Institute
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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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