To any reader who met Baroness Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) first through her memorable Out of Africa these new pieces carrying us back to her African plantation will be heart warming news. Twenty five years absence has depended the memories, sharpened certain features, and made possible these human reflections of the life and the people that gave it meaning. Her Somali servant, Farah, emerges life size, a towering presence — "my servant by the grace of God"- who made her every action and decision momentous. After a quarter of a century she can sub-title her pen sketch "Portrait of a Gentleman". There's humor as well as philosophical content in her choice of incidents to round out this sketch. And there is, too, a growing understanding of his religion as a Muslim. There are others of her staff and her neighborhood but this stands out. Then too she writes of adventures — of hunting and the lion she shot, feeding on a dead giraffe; of her role, confessedly one imposed by a superstition-ridden people, as a healer, with a scrap of letter written by her king as a magic piece; of Abdullah, Farah's small brother, and the different place he held in her household, in her life. Throughout one senses deeply the role she played as mistress and friend — and the philosophy that grew within her in the ten years she struggled to keep the plantation intact. The writing needs no encomiums; every reader knows there is delight in store.
Pub Date: Jan. 3, 1960
ISBN: 0140180435
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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