A dryly charming look at the way the French live now, through the sharp eyes of its most acclaimed chronicler.
The 2022 Nobel laureate ruminates on a year of shopping at her local big-box retailer.
"So, from November 2012 to October 2013,” writes Ernaux, “I made a record of most of my visits to the Auchan superstore in Cergy, where I usually go, for reasons of convenience and pleasure." Noting the role of the arts in determining what people find worth remembering, the author laments that superstores “are only starting to be considered as places worthy of representation.” Ernaux feels that conventional discourse about them is "tinged with aversion," which is not her take at all—even though, back in 1993, when she first began writing about the superstore "as a great human meeting place," she did so "with a certain sense of shame." These days, her feelings about Auchan are closer to those reflected by the book's title, a bit of overheard dialogue between a mother and child just in front of her on the moving walkway as they ascend toward "the lights and garlands hanging down like necklaces of precious stones." Ernaux mostly loves the place, though her approbation includes a cleareyed grasp of its mission, for example, as seen in the area of cultural diversity. "A few meters away, in the space set up for Ramadan, an ecstatic little boy holds a pack of dates stuffed with pink and green almond paste,” she writes. “Indifferent to the xenophobic fears of one part of society, the superstore adapts to the cultural diversity of its clientele, scrupulously keeping pace with their holidays. No ethics are involved, just ‘ethnic marketing.’ ” As the author scrutinizes the contents of other people's carts, they scrutinize hers as well, and she squirms a bit—even more so when she is recognized, which happens more than once. "I have to go down to Level 1,” she writes, “before I can recover my tranquility as an anonymous customer."
A dryly charming look at the way the French live now, through the sharp eyes of its most acclaimed chronicler.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9780300268218
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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