For diehards who want to know more about Prince Charles and the love of his life—who is definitely not Princess Di—British journalist Wilson redigests 20 years of royal gossip. British expository style makes this different from American rehashes, and there is a decidedly exotic quality to the subject matter. To read about Charles's affair with Camilla Parker Bowles is to read about a tribe at least as strange and anachronistic as the Yanomami of Brazil and the Amish of Pennsylvania. Wilson (ghostwriter of James Whitaker's Diana v. Charles, not reviewed) gives a tour of the customs of blue-blooded Britons, of a world in which a prince could conduct an affair with a woman whose public school was decorated with the stuffed body of a ``crucified'' bat, and who is married to someone formerly called the ``Silver Stick in Waiting'' to the Queen. The sex may be old, but the anthropology is riveting: the royal calendar, the London season, the rituals around mating and breeding, the aristocratic pastimes of polo and fox hunting, and the household courtiers and guards who still dress in the same costumes, so Camilla's father observes, they once wore to fight Napoleon. And where the Prince of Wales apparently spends his days and nights preparing to be King of England and thinking about Camilla Parker Bowles's knickers (a transcript of the famous Camillagate tape is included). When the world watched Diana Spencer walk down the aisle of St. Paul's—yes, even then—Charles and Camilla had just shared what they claimed would be their last tryst. Diana gets little sympathy: Though often on moral high ground, she is a neurotic ``bag of bones.'' Camilla, with her ``voluptuous curves,'' is devoted and discreet, a ``woman who cares deeply for her man''—the Tammy Wynette of the Beaufort hunt club. Less interesting are arguments about whether the monarchy will stand. More than anyone cares to know about the prince's sex life. But as a scandalizing glimpse into a closed society, it's rather fascinating.
Pub Date: Nov. 18, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-13808-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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
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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