Heartfelt and richly passionate impressions from a creative writer gone too soon.
A heart-transplant recipient shares her personal journey.
In this posthumously published essay collection, Talve-Goodman (1986-2018) openly shares the history of her body. Born with a congenital heart condition, she chronicles her medical experiences ranging from an 11-hour marathon back surgery that untethered her spinal cord to the implantation of her new heart in 2006 when she was 19. A collaborative effort “made out of love and grief,” the text, edited by the author’s sister and novelist Tinti, mixes creative nonfiction, memoir, and critical theory. In the opening essay, the author recalls a night as a 20-year-old college student when she exposed her chest to a boyfriend and admitted to having had a heart transplant just one year prior. In another impassioned story, she recounts a memorable trip to San Diego with a group of other teens with organ transplants, noting the solidarity of people with “displaced” kidneys, livers, and hearts and how the identities of their donors can become a vexing mystery. Talve-Goodman candidly reflects on her own physical self-consciousness, graphically describing squirmy biopsy procedures. After a two-year wait for a new heart and countless surgeries, she admits, “I wasn’t good at much, but I was good at waiting.” The daughter of two rabbis, the author’s pride in her Jewish heritage infuses many essays, most of which read like nimble coming-of-age diary entries. Other pieces find her trying to harmonize with the “dead person’s heart” beating rapidly in her chest (a transplant typically takes a year to “thaw and reach its capacity”) or offering panicked discourse on organ donors and their correlation to “zombies.” While crafting her essays, Talve-Goodman became unexpectedly ill and succumbed to lymphoma in 2018 at age 31. Never maudlin or overly sympathetic, the book shows how she transformed her physical limitations into an outward source of strength, and her vividly drawn essays effectively enlighten and educate.
Heartfelt and richly passionate impressions from a creative writer gone too soon.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781954276055
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
There’s an abundance of love and gratitude in this wildly entertaining, utterly charming memoir.
A look at the life of one of pop music’s most enduring stars.
Pop star and American Idol judge Richie opens his memoir with an account of his 2015 appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in England, where more than 175,000 people gathered to watch him perform some of his many hit singles. The singer reacts with disbelief to the crowd’s enthusiasm: “Did I dream all of this up? If not, I mean—How in the world did this even happen?” His book, marked with wide-eyed disbelief about his own success, aims to answer that question. Richie movingly tells the story of his childhood in his “forever home” of Tuskegee, Alabama; he was a “painfully, awkwardly, horribly shy” boy who struggled with anxiety and undiagnosed ADHD. While a student at Tuskegee Institute, he joined the funk band the Commodores, who in short order became a sensation, playing residencies at Smalls Paradise in Harlem and opening for the Jackson 5 on tour. With no small amount of gentle self-deprecation, Richie writes about his hit singles with the band, including “Easy” and “Three Times a Lady.” He left the band in 1982 and embarked on his solo career, which saw him take the top of the charts with songs including “You Are,” “All Night Long,” and “Hello,” which cemented his status as a worldwide icon. Richie’s book is infused with gratitude; while the reader gets the sense that he is aware of his talent, there is nothing in the book that comes off as bragging, and he still seems star-struck when writing about celebrity friends such as Stevie Wonder and Gregory Peck. Richie is refreshingly open in the book, which functions as both a fun memoir and a love letter to music and his beloved Tuskegee.
There’s an abundance of love and gratitude in this wildly entertaining, utterly charming memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780063253643
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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