A lyrical, radiant memoir.
The mysteries of lives.
Wroe, a biographer and obituary editor for the Economist, offers a graceful, haunting meditation on her life’s work: “catching souls,” her term for capturing “the unique and essential part of ourselves, our self-conscious and transcendent core.” Some biographical subjects were singularly challenging: Pontius Pilate because there was little direct evidence of his daily life, Percy Shelley because there was so much. “Entering the life of Shelley was permanently exhausting, exhilarating, fraught; I would find myself at dinner parties,” she admits, “suddenly holding forth on the freedom of the press or the rights of man, shocking myself as much as anyone else. Because, for a while, I was more than myself.” Her sensitivity to her subjects—“the way they walk, sit in a chair, shrug off a jacket, hold their heads; tiny gestures, snatches of talk”—is apparent in the obituaries she references (a list is appended). She delicately evokes the individuality of poets Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott; singers Miriam Makeba, Joan Sutherland, and Luciano Pavarotti; physicist Steven Weinberg and ebullient tomboy Shirley Temple, among many others. “Life resides in details,” Wroe notes, rather than in a résumé of achievements. She learned from the conductor Claudio Abbado, for example, “that there was a certain sound to snow.” She brings the same attentiveness to her observations of nature and the precise language of her poetry and prose. “On days of mist or snow,” she writes, “the emptier hills and valleys lie like creatures still breathing, as if sheets have been thrown over sleeping bodies or muslin drawn across a face.” A failed clarinet player, she exults in the sounds of woodwinds and reeds, “the voices of wild landscapes.” From inner lives to windswept hills, Wroe’s world is filled with wonder.
A lyrical, radiant memoir.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781400347933
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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