An inspiring story that will appeal to foodies and budding entrepreneurs alike.
A Midwestern “meat-and-potatoes-eating gal” chronicles how she opened a successful cooking school in Paris.
Bertch has lived and worked in Europe for two decades, and in 2009, she founded Le Cuisine Paris, now “the largest nonprofessional culinary school in France.” In her first book, the author offers valuable, often hilarious nuggets of lived wisdom—and not just in terms of cooking. Originally from Chicago, Bertch targeted finance as the way to a wider world, first working in London before being transferred to Paris as a “relationship banker” in the early 2000s. The author recounts how, early on during her time in France, she was lonely, spoke little French, and was shunned by most of her older colleagues. Eventually, she realized that everything in the city is “coded…from its professional trajectories to its wardrobe,” and she had to learn the ropes the hard way, via faux pas. She began to understand that most people focus on one thing and disdain being “well-rounded,” and relationships develop slowly through trust and referral. “They wanted to put me in a box, but I didn’t fit in a box,” writes Bertch. “Instead, with my red hair, American accent, and audacious ideas, they considered me a circus animal.” Dissatisfied, the author quit her job and started a cooking school with her then-boyfriend, Olivier, who helped open doors for her. They were unable to “seduce” the concierge of the building, who considered the school a “nuisance,” so they found a new space in the fashionable Marais on the Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville, with its promising busy foot traffic. Despite numerous obstacles, including the terrorist attack on the Bataclan concert venue, the fire in Notre Dame, and the pandemic, Le Cuisine Paris has become a highly successful business.
An inspiring story that will appeal to foodies and budding entrepreneurs alike.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593500422
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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 frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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