A well-balanced, soul-searching family memoir with broad appeal.
In this LGBTQ memoir, a teacher and activist relates the changes, challenges, and joys of her marriage to a trans-identified psychotherapist/rock ’n’ roller.
“The first time I ever saw Katy, she was wearing a full beard and a prosthetic man-chest with perfectly molded pecs and sculpted abs,” begins this memoir. Schilt was attracted to Katy Koonce but not yet ready to come out. The two finally connected in group therapy, “a strange place to start a relationship,” but it had some advantages: “Before we ever spent a moment alone together, Katy knew that I was a depression-prone approval seeker….I knew that Katy was a former drug addict with hepatitis C” and also a therapist herself. Both had trouble with body image, Schilt from growing up with “compulsive dieters” and Koonce, who is transgender, from experiencing gender dysphoria. In Part I, Schilt describes the couple’s courtship, marriage, and birth of their child Waylon, ending with Koonce’s much-desired final chest reconstruction. Part II turns to Koonce’s treatment for hepatitis C, which weakened her and required much caretaking while Schilt was also looking after their young son. This left Schilt feeling bruised; Part III examines how she learned to stand up for her own needs and began writing. What makes Schilt’s engaging work stand out in today’s crowded memoir field is how well she avoids its besetting sins, self-pity and melodrama. Her wry humor, hard-won insights, and appreciation of eccentricity come through instead, as when she describes Donna, Koonce’s force-of-nature mother: “Saying your prayers to the moon is pretty risqué stuff in a town where the Baptists still believe that Methodists go to hell.” Especially absorbing is seeing how Koonce’s illness forced Schilt to change. “All of my life, I’d been waiting for permission,” she writes. She had to deliberately “practice acting as entitled and taking up as much space as Katy,” which she found agonizing at first. Activism, a faith community that fit, and motherhood all contributed to her growth as well, described with lively clarity.
A well-balanced, soul-searching family memoir with broad appeal.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9860844-3-0
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Transgress Press
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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