Some readers may wish Kincaid had occasionally turned her sharp eye on high culture, just to counterbalance all the pop...
Now better known as a fiction writer, Kincaid (My Garden, 1999, etc.) here collects “Talk of the Town” pieces written for The New Yorker between 1978 and 1983, offering a witty, quirky look at life in the Big Apple as seen through the eyes of a young, hip woman.
The essays include Kincaid’s very first assignment, a report on Brooklyn’s West Indian Day Parade, as well as the much-talked-about “Expense Account” budget of a press conference breakfast and her final “Talk” piece depicting a recording industry party at Mr. Chow’s restaurant. In between there are myriad musings on concerts, promotional parties, famous people (Gloria Vanderbilt, Ed Koch, Richard Pryor, Sting), the Junior Miss pageant, and gatherings of policemen and hotel industry employees. There are also some unexpectedly moving pieces. One concerns a woman (Kincaid, of course) who rides a train from Cleveland to New York one snowy night. Another examines the difference between “early morning” in the West Indies (5:30 a.m.) and in Manhattan (8:30 a.m.), then reveals how a New York transplant from the West Indies fills the time until her friends and business acquaintances arise: by reading articles in women’s magazines “about Elizabeth Taylor’s new, simple life” and “watching the morning news for one whole hour.” Kincaid’s writing is casual and comfortable, laced with repetitive phrases that pack a wallop. Some of the essays once considered classics (i.e., a piece written in the style of a Nancy Drew mystery novel) don’t seem quite so clever anymore. But others retain the whimsical charm of the pre–Tina Brown New Yorker, as in Kincaid’s description of bow-tie–clad Sandy, the dog from the Broadway musical Annie, making public appearances and “looking sad-eyed, the way all dogs look when they are around people eating.”
Some readers may wish Kincaid had occasionally turned her sharp eye on high culture, just to counterbalance all the pop coverage, but her admirers (and those of the magazine) will find this an enjoyable diversion.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-27239-5
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
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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