A rather jaundiced look at American culture by a highly regarded Croatian novelist living in exile. In a torrent of metaphors, Ugrei (Fording the Stream of Consciousness, not reviewed) compares her embattled native country, the war-torn former Yugoslavia, to what she found on a busman's holiday in the United States. Invited to teach at Wesleyan University, she divided her time between New York City and sleepy Middletown, Conn. Much of the book centers on the contrast between placid America, with its instantly disposable pop culture, and the brutalized Balkans, where civil war is taking its toll on ancient civilizations. The book is designed as a series of brief essays, etymological examinations of how America perceives concepts like ``harassment'' or invents new ones like ``couch potato.'' Ugrei repeatedly likens herself to Alice, slipping through the looking glass into a fantastical American landscape of fast food, TV talk shows, and the obsessive need to organize one's time. The resulting book is, as the title suggests, relentlessly mordant and often bitter. In a sotto voce response to a photographer who doesn't know where Zagreb is, she writes: ``In Croatia. In a country which does not yet exist. And where is that? In Yugoslavia. In a country which no longer exists.'' Many of her observations are original and witty (``Americans shop as if they were taking an important exam''), and it's hard to argue with her characterization of the US as ``a deeply infantile culture,'' but Ugrei often assumes a tone that is both insulting and uncharitable to her seemingly benign hosts. She now lives in Berlin. Given the nature of the ``real world'' she left behind in Zagreb, it's perhaps understandable and even forgivable that Ugrei is angry much of the time, but it doesn't always make for easy reading. A noteworthy book, but a disagreeable one.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-86016-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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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