A richly evoked if sometimes grating account of an adventurous retirement project.
Boyle recounts her adventures restoring an Italian farmhouse with her husband in this debut memoir.
The village of Monforte sits at the foot of the Alps in the Piemonte region of Northern Italy. The author and her husband, Kim, live a few miles outside of town in a 300-year-old farmhouse that they have spent the past few years restoring, “[t]aking this wonderful stone structure apart, virtually stone by stone, and putting it back together.” Boyle and Kim first discovered the picturesque Langhe area of Piemonte during their honeymoon. They immediately fell in love with this land of winding roads, cobblestone streets, and hilltop churches as well as the welcoming people and divine food. When the trip ended and the couple returned to their lives in San Francisco, the author could not get Monforte out of her thoughts—newly retired, she was determined to buy a home there, even if the still-working Kim wasn’t convinced. A subsequent trip sealed the deal, and before they left the couple were shown the dilapidated farmhouse that would become theirs. Set on a hillside, “it looked out over the whole world—vineyards, hazelnut orchards, farms and forests, and even the little hill town of Monforte, all the way out to the craggy Alps, still brushed with just a smattering of snow on the highest peak.” In this memoir, Boyle recounts the thrilling if arduous process of restoring the old house (and the larger barn, which became the property’s primary residence) while acclimating to the slower pace of life in the Langhe. Relating vignettes of Italian life—such as stumbling upon a chef and her neighbors pinching thousands of ravioli for a restaurant’s weekly menu—as well as bits of secondhand Italian wisdom, Boyle ends each chapter with a recipe or two of Piemontese cuisine.
The author’s prose has a breathless enthusiasm familiar to anyone who has listened to an American just back from Italy delivering an endless series of odes to food, wine, and food cooked in wine: “We stopped and ate lunch at a trattoria in a whitewashed little cottage that served traditional Piemontese cuisine. I ordered roast veal smothered in Barolo with vegetables, cooked for hours. It was so tender it fell apart at the touch of my fork.” The process of restoring the house makes for a satisfying read, in part because it fulfills the fantasy many readers have likely had (and likely never acted on) of undertaking a similar project in a similarly beautiful landscape. This pleasant aura of escapism is sadly marred by Boyle’s slightly insufferable regard for all things Piemontese. While the author likely intends the text to be taken as travel writing, it more often reads like a victory lap for a wealthy couple who successfully bought a second home. Even when dark subjects rear their heads—a cancer diagnosis, Covid-19’s ravaging of Italy—they are quickly dispatched, and good vibes are restored. Some readers will find this all a lovely vacation, but others will no doubt roll their eyes at one italicized Italian phrase too many.
A richly evoked if sometimes grating account of an adventurous retirement project.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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