Shrewd, humane, and deeply engaging pieces.
A collection of the late author’s essays coheres as a memoir.
A gathering of more than 70 essays, talks, and reviews by award-winning British author Mantel (1952-2022), edited by Pearson, offers insights into the life and work of a prolific novelist. The pieces, previously published in venues such as the New York Review of Books, the Guardian, and the Spectator, include reflections on movies (When Harry Met Sally, for one), books (a comparison of biographies of Jane Austen), social and cultural commentary (irreverent assessments of Diana and Kate Middleton), Mantel’s inspiration as a writer, and her serious, debilitating health struggles. In 1980, she discloses, after years of misdiagnoses, she underwent surgery for endometriosis, which involved a hysterectomy and removal of part of her bladder and intestines. Still in her 20s, she became infertile and post-menopausal. Some pieces are slyly funny, such as the title essay, which reports her experience with a hypnotist who sent her careening into a past life. Throughout, Mantel offers insights into the enterprise of writing. “My concern as a writer,” she reveals, “is with memory, personal and collective: with the restless dead asserting their claims.” Her Reith Lectures, broadcast on BBC radio in 2017, are likely to seem freshest to readers familiar with her published pieces. In these talks, she considers the challenges of historical fiction and the “violent curiosity” that propelled her to investigate the French Revolution and Tudor England. “History,” she writes, “is not the past—it is the method we have evolved of organizing our ignorance of the past.” Mining historical sources, she aims to imagine “the interior drama” of characters whose minds can never fully be known. The novelist, she asserts, “works away at the point where what is enacted meets what is dream, where politics meets psychology, where private and public meet.”
Shrewd, humane, and deeply engaging pieces.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781250342225
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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