Powerful, confessional writing combined with vivid depictions of sailing.
This elegant nautical memoir tells the story of a young woman’s courageous personal struggle for independence.
Garber’s debut coming-of-age memoir, Implosion (2018), was about trauma and healing. The author’s latest book revisits her troubled teenage years when she and her siblings were allegedly tormented by their abusive architect father. She focuses on time spent seafaring with her brother Woodie on a sailing-school ship when she was 17. The two were sent away after their father, complaining that he had “two problem kids,” declared that 14-year-old Woodie needed to “get his life in shape.” The book opens in 1971 with Garber fearfully climbing the rigging of a ship, terrified further by the voice of her father telling her she is “weak.” She recounts her growing sense of independence as she learned about sailing—everything from celestial navigation to splicing ratlines. Garber vividly animates her and Woodie’s voyage on the 360-foot Antarna (now called the Sea Cloud), which set out from Miami; visited Grand Bahama, Key West, and Veracruz; and ended its journey abruptly in Panama. The crew faced numerous terrifying moments, including nearly sinking and being held by Panamanian soldiers for a drug search. On returning home to Ohio, Garber felt like she slipped back into the unbearable trap of family life, and she and her brother contemplated patricide. Her father’s sudden illness, however, allowed her to escape.
The prose here is courageously frank; Garber is unafraid to explore even the darkest, most unsettling moments of her father’s alleged abuse. When recalling the secret “backrubs” he gave her when her mother was away, she writes: “I declared to myself in a silent cold fury, I will feel nothing, when his hand stroked below my waist, across my belly and hips and thighs.” One of the pleasures of the book is watching the experiences at sea teach the author to be resilient: “I’d learned that liberation was sweeter than holding on. I would risk everything I had to save us.” The author also effortlessly evokes the exhilaration of sailing: “My hair whipped across my face. I loved looking up at the taut white sail, the way the boom flew across the deck as we came about, before we caught the wind again.” Readers familiar with Garber’s memoir Implosion will be aware of the author’s troubled growth into adulthood. Some details are naturally repeated in this book but elegantly reframed in context with her sea voyage. Still, fans of straightforward nautical memoirs may hope for an even more detailed account of the journey—coordinates and all. But although the reader is allowed to taste the sea, the emphasis here is on Garber’s psychological odyssey. At one point Garber writes: “Each dawn I watched the transformation of one thing into another, of night into day, as it spread and expanded.” As the memoir progresses, it is interesting to observe Garber’s own incremental transformation into a strong young woman. A detailed diagram of the Sea Cloud is included.
Powerful, confessional writing combined with vivid depictions of sailing.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-7369925-5-5
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Toad Hall Editions
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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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