A rambling account offers support and intriguing coping techniques for men suffering from clinical depression.
A debut author intimately explores his midlife struggle to confront a low-grade depression that allowed him professional and personal success but prevented him from experiencing joy.
In 1988, at age 41, Finger lost his job with the North Carolina Study Commission on Aging, finding himself in a psychologically downward spiral that threatened to overwhelm him and his family. He had suffered from periods of depression before, but had always plowed through, using school, Peace Corps participation, work, and family responsibilities to keep his mind focused. But this time, although he began picking up assorted writing/consulting projects, he couldn’t seem to move past a growing sadness that caused him to draw further into himself: “The transitions in my life, both large and small, have triggered what I have learned are symptoms of depression—worry, lack of hope, workaholism, irritability, and sleeplessness.” A men’s support group that he joined before the firing had been offering activity-oriented workshops; Finger decided to give them a try. It was the beginning of a decadelong journey to self-discovery. He sought help through traditional treatment (psychotherapy and Prozac) and learned to express his emotions through modern dance. Finger brings readers through every step of his personal revelations and progressions, be they detailed reporting of symbolic dreams, poems written to celebrate workshop occasions, or the dances he choreographed, described movement by movement. He writes: “I start doing little crane dances to accent my long, thin arms as huge wings, my hands bent at the wrist, fingers pointing down. My lean legs, balancing on one and then the other, complement the picture. Bending my left knee, I pick my right leg up. Then, I raise my forearms up, fingers pointing to the sky.... I try to call up the crane within me and remember that survival is possible.” The prose is polished, often poignant, displaying an engaging honesty. But less would have been more when it comes to Finger’s exhaustive mental meanderings through his memories and self-analysis.
A rambling account offers support and intriguing coping techniques for men suffering from clinical depression.Pub Date: July 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9965875-0-1
Page Count: 296
Publisher: JourneyCake Spirit
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2017
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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