An often compelling story of tribulation and recovery.
Maher finds faith and inner strength in her battle against mental and physical illness in this inspirational memoir.
The author’s father died when she was 3 years old, and she was raised by her bipolar mother. Later, she spent time in foster care, during which she says she was physically and sexually abused; she also started cutting herself at a young age. After she was kicked out of her house on her 18th birthday, she joined the Air Force, but had to be hospitalized after a suicide attempt. She was diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, and PTSD, and soon afterward, she writes, she was shot by a police officer, charged with attempted murder, and jailed for six months—all before she was 22. A later suicide attempt landed her in an intensive care unit, paralyzed due to lesions on her spinal cord. After weeks of assessment, she was given an American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale score: “an A, only on this test A meant total paralysis,” she writes. Without helpful family members, a place to live, or sufficient medical treatment, Maher fought to maintain as much mobility and independence as possible. She writes that she was aided in her struggle by a newfound faith in God and her tenacity to survive in a world (and body) that seemed to want her dead. Maher’s prose is simple and direct, though sometimes flecked with typos and awkward syntax. She also sometimes leaves out pieces of information, which confuses the timeline and obscures the causes of some events. Even so, her story is so engaging, and her attitude so absent of self-pity, that readers will quickly forgive the prose’s lack of polish. Maher’s faith in God is strong, but her discussions of it don’t occupy much space in the text. Overall, the book is less a call to religion than it is an ode to determination and the transformative power that it can have on a person’s life.
An often compelling story of tribulation and recovery.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4787-5914-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Outskirts
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2016
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
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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