A shrewd and sympathetic portrait of a fascinating, complex “modern” woman.
A modern reconsideration of the notorious life and career of the early-19th-century Anglo-Irish aristocrat and novelist.
Lady Caroline Lamb (1785-1828) has been the subject of countless works of literature and film adaptations, her place in history both illuminated and sullied by her affair with Lord Byron. Fraser, the celebrated biographer and novelist, delivers a lean yet spirited account, offering further nuance to Lamb’s story within the thorny aristocratic society she inhabited. Narrated with dramatic verve and wit, this is ripe material for a potential TV series. Early on, Fraser establishes Lamb’s restless nature and eccentricities as well as her strengths. At an early age, she enjoyed a great deal of freedom, and she was exceptionally creative, well read, and multilingual. She was also remarkably caring toward those less fortunate and forward-thinking regarding women’s rights, occasionally disguising herself as a pageboy to gain entrance into male establishments. Because Lamb was prone to emotional outbreaks, Fraser conjectures that she perhaps was bipolar. At 19, she fell in love with and married William Lamb, an up-and-coming politician (he later became Lord Melbourne and prime minister). Within a few years of their marriage, Caroline got entangled in a brief yet passionate love affair with Lord Byron that would consume much of her future existence. In scrutinizing the scandalous nature of Lamb’s behavior, Fraser asserts how criticism reflected less on her extramarital activity, conduct that ran rampant among this society, than on her uninhibited publicizing of the affair, spotlighted in her anonymously published novel Glenarvon, a Gothic romance with thinly veiled portraits of Byron and herself. “It was the obvious connection with Lord Byron, calling attention to Caroline’s famous romance, which outraged the grand Whig ladies, themselves involved in endless extramarital affairs, to say nothing of mothering children by their lovers,” writes Fraser. “She refused to abide by the Whig code of maximum discretion—and maximum dissipation.”
A shrewd and sympathetic portrait of a fascinating, complex “modern” woman.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781639364053
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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