A deep dive into human-canine friendship, by turns funny and heartfelt.
A man celebrates his love for his dogs in this doting memoir.
Frisbie looks back on his relationships with several pooches, focusing on Boo, an Australian shepherd, white with black patches, whom he picked out at a shelter because she had “sinuous muscles” and a sleek physique that seemed “like a vessel designed to contain a strong spirit.” Frisbie and Boo trained and competed together in dog agility meets, in which canines run obstacle courses under their handlers’ command, near their Denver home. But mostly they just provided each other with companionship, especially on long walks around the neighborhood and in nearby state parks. The book unfolds as a series of essays about the doggy things Boo did, including chasing squirrels, floundering into ponds, hogging the bed, fidgeting incessantly while riding shotgun in Frisbie’s pickup, getting stung on the snout by yellow jackets, and carrying on a ceaseless crusade against any coyote whose scent crossed her nose. (“A coyote-tinged miasma drifted from a heavily vegetated swale….Within seconds, a riot of shrieks and screams erupted from the swamp,” the author writes of one encounter.) Other adventures erupted on fishing trips to Montana and Idaho, including Boo’s brave, suicidal, bristling stand-off with a grizzly and her two cubs. Nosing in occasionally are Frisbie’s mother’s canines Koko, Sachi, and Yoshi, all of them shiba inus, who looked like small, reddish huskies and contributed their own feisty antics. Frisbie gives an unusually fine-grained, intense portrait of the deep emotional bond that can develop between a human and a dog. (“Boo was my child,” he writes, describing his panic when she was almost swept away in a river.) His prose is colorful and droll and captures the delightful strangeness of the dog universe in evocative detail. (“To execute a perfect stinky roll,” he observes of the canine habit of wallowing in manure or carrion, “the dog must remain in an inverted position over the target area while aggressively kicking their legs with spasms of joy. This technique, if performed properly, grinds the foul odor deep into the fur on their backs. It’s a difficult maneuver and can require multiple attempts until the dog is satisfied with the results.”) Dog lovers will embrace this resonant account.
A deep dive into human-canine friendship, by turns funny and heartfelt.Pub Date: April 11, 2022
ISBN: 9798886274257
Page Count: 200
Publisher: TFL Stories
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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