Courageous writing with minor flaws in an emotionally illuminating account.
A former actor and the wife of a TV star confronts deep-rooted feelings of failure during a stay in Hawaii in this debut memoir.
Raised in the 1970s in Sydney, Australia, Carbonell was 12 years old when she first wrote the words “Shannon Kenny will be a famous actress,” using her mother’s red nail polish. In 2010, she found herself accompanying her husband, Nestor, an actor and a series regular on the TV drama Lost, to a red-carpet event. She recalls feeling “fat and ugly” and regarding Evangeline Lilly with jealously because she “looked just like I’d always wanted to look” and was adored as “a famous actress.” Although Carbonell enjoyed limited small screen success as an actor—she was a regular on The Invisible Man, with guest appearances on shows such as Seinfeld—she quit the profession in favor of motherhood. The author began to resent her husband’s success, feeling she had “lost a two-person race.” After moving to Hawaii for a year because of Nestor’s Lost gig, she began to face up to the feeling that something was missing inside of her. Her journey through depression to self-acceptance involved nurturing her creativity and developing her relationship with God. Carbonell writes with an intense level of intimacy, allowing readers to eavesdrop on bitter family arguments. One disagreement with her father culminated in him yelling: “What have you ever done with your life?” The hurt inflicted by this remark is palpable, but the author is also able to envisage the bigger picture: “He seems happier when his life has some sparkle around the edges. I was so sorry I wasn’t able to give him that.” Carbonell’s use of similes can be idiosyncratic (The peaks “are silhouetted in the dusk like a Wacky Wire carnival game”), which could prove mildly irritating for some. Comparisons between her own life and the script of Lost also feel forced and unnecessary: “I had to ‘go back,’ like the characters on LOST—back to my original self.” The author is nonetheless refreshingly frank, calling out the realities of show business: “Almost nobody in Hollywood finds a woman fuckable at forty.” Both forthright and tenderly considerate, this book will be of interest to Lost fans but also to those who feel that their journeys have not lived up to their expectations.
Courageous writing with minor flaws in an emotionally illuminating account.Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-62634-767-0
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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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