An entertaining account of a boy edging toward manhood through a meandering picaresque.
A geologist looks back on magic tricks, Arctic ordeals, and many encounters with feisty animals in this rollicking memoir.
McLaren, a Canadian geologist and consultant, recalls unusual pursuits, occupations, and journeys undertaken in his childhood and young adulthood. Growing up in Ottawa, he weathered several untoward lessons while learning to be a magician; one botched trick sent a boa constrictor lunging at a group of terrified cheerleaders. As a teenager, he worked two summers as a cowboy in the Canadian Rockies and recollects intricate procedurals on shoeing and packing horses along with many mishaps, including an agonizing horseback ride to a hospital after he managed to cut himself with both an ax and a chainsaw. After high school, McLaren spent a summer wandering Europe, sleeping in hostels and performing magic shows, and was set upon by guard dogs while relieving himself by the barbed wire along the East German border. In college, he landed another summer job in the Rockies on a geological mapping project and drove off a menacing grizzly by nailing it in the forehead with a tossed rock. The book culminates in a summer spent in the Canadian Arctic on a geology expedition, where he experienced “eerie and otherworldly” whiteouts—“with everything white and no visible horizon, it is like being suspended in emptiness”—and a tense encounter with a polar bear. McLaren’s reminiscences are mostly shaggy dog stories with no particular theme or moral, but they add up to a coherent account of maturation. Through his oddball jobs, japes, and pratfalls, readers see him accumulating knowledge—his horse-packing skills, for example, translated to snowmobiles—along with resourcefulness and initiative. His prose is vivid, punchy, and often raucous—“He held himself in place with a mouthful of my jeans while lashing out with his taloned hind legs in a series of violent kicks….If you have never been attacked by a man-eating rabbit, don’t sneer”—and waxes lyrical in odes to majestic northern landscapes. (“The deep orange orb of the sun competed with the white orb of the moon to cast rich dark shades of blue across an infinite, cloudless sky. Below, the snow on the mountain ice caps sparkled.”) The result is an engaging coming-of-age story full of hangdog charm.
An entertaining account of a boy edging toward manhood through a meandering picaresque.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2022
ISBN: 9781039151017
Page Count: 219
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 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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