Suvari’s bracing tale of abusive patterns and building new beginnings is wrenching, potent, and ultimately inspirational.
In her powerful debut memoir, the actor demonstrates both candor and storytelling skill.
Suvari is stunningly straightforward about how she survived—and even flourished—despite years of sexual and emotional abuse. There will be tabloid interest in The Great Peace, named for “a book of poetry and stories” she wrote as an escape from her troubled teenage years, but this is much more than a celebrity tell-all. The author unflinchingly reveals that she was raped at age 12 by a childhood friend, discusses her suicide attempt, and examines her numerous questionable relationships with older men as she started her career as a young actor. Though Suvari doesn’t include anything about the sexual harassment allegations against her American Beauty co-star Kevin Spacey, she does tell a story about an unusual ploy Spacey used to prepare for a pivotal scene in the movie. The author also frankly explores the problems with her previous two marriages even though they are not always flattering for her. As an award-winning veteran actor, Suvari is already known as a masterful visual storyteller, and the craftsmanship she exhibits here is impressive. “It was too hard to verbalize some of my traumas, even to my therapist….Those memories were like walls that kept me from escaping,” she writes about her first real experience in therapy. “I had become too used to pretending I was okay.” Each bite-sized chapter skillfully builds on the experiences of the previous one while foreshadowing what is to come, creating a page-turner that propels the streamlined narrative forward. Even when, in the story, Suvari seems stuck in a destructive relationship, she offers enough hints that suggest she’ll make it out. How she does it is a rewarding journey worth taking. “I want [the book] to serve as the flickering light at the end of a dark road showing there is a way out,” she writes in the author’s note. “And there is.”
Suvari’s bracing tale of abusive patterns and building new beginnings is wrenching, potent, and ultimately inspirational.Pub Date: July 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-306-87452-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.
The comedian argues that the arts of moderation and common sense must be reinvigorated.
Some people are born snarky, some become snarky, and some have snarkiness thrust upon them. Judging from this book, Maher—host of HBO’s Real Time program and author of The New New Rules and When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden—is all three. As a comedian, he has a great deal of leeway to make fun of people in politics, and he often delivers hilarious swipes with a deadpan face. The author describes himself as a traditional liberal, with a disdain for Republicans (especially the MAGA variety) and a belief in free speech and personal freedom. He claims that he has stayed much the same for more than 20 years, while the left, he argues, has marched toward intolerance. He sees an addiction to extremism on both sides of the aisle, which fosters the belief that anyone who disagrees with you must be an enemy to be destroyed. However, Maher has always displayed his own streaks of extremism, and his scorched-earth takedowns eventually become problematic. The author has something nasty to say about everyone, it seems, and the sarcastic tone starts after more than 300 pages. As has been the case throughout his career, Maher is best taken in small doses. The book is worth reading for the author’s often spot-on skewering of inept politicians and celebrities, but it might be advisable to occasionally dip into it rather than read the whole thing in one sitting. Some parts of the text are hilarious, but others are merely insulting. Maher is undeniably talented, but some restraint would have produced a better book.
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781668051351
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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