An intimate recounting of a literary life.
How one writer reads.
Making her nonfiction debut, novelist Cain offers a spare, graceful meditation on her rich, idiosyncratic reading and her practice of writing. Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver, Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter, Adam Gopnik’s Winter, and Annie Ernaux’s The Possession are among dozens of works (a bibliography is appended) that have inspired Cain’s thoughts about identity and authenticity, language and landscape, solitude and friendship—not least, the trust and vulnerability that complicate human-animal relationships, such as hers with her three cats. It was Marguerite Duras’ The Ravishing of Lol Stein that inspired her to write fiction when she found herself unable to stop thinking about Duras’ central character. Regarding her craft, “of all the forms language can take, the sentence is the one I’m most drawn to,” she writes. “I want to leave a chain of images that remain in the reader’s mind. I want to write what heightened experience feels like.” Cain is excited by the idea that she might “haunt” her sentences so that “the reader might be taken over subtly.” Her sensibilities, though, have changed as she has gotten older: “I have more fears than I had when I was younger; I am more rigid; and there has been a loss too of the freedom I once felt, when the world seemed entirely open, and utterly beautiful.” How, she wonders, will these changes—and changes in the world, too, including climate change and the pandemic—affect the novel she is working on now? “I want to be able to write about loneliness, humiliation, and shame, things I never would have written about before, that would have embarrassed me,” she notes. “For a long time I didn’t want to write ‘emotionally’…there has been something valuable for me in exploring the emotionless.” Cain ties her development as a writer to her engagement in zazen meditation; in stillness, she was able to listen for her voice.
An intimate recounting of a literary life.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-948980-13-5
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Dorothy
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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