A sometimes digressive but ultimately hopeful story of a widow’s life after loss.
In the wake of a tragedy, an artist navigates grief and finds new direction along the Intracoastal Waterway in this memoir.
Busenbark’s husband, Rick, had a fatal heart attack in December 2011, which upended her life. Clinging to plans they’d made together before his passing, the author, a landscape painter, moved from Peterborough, New Hampshire to the small town of Hampton Falls, and opened an art gallery. Her sorrow had only just begun to abate when her 34-year-old son, Richard, died of a fatal overdose. Having lost two of the most important people in her life in as many years, Busenbark struggled to make sense of it all: “I built the foundation of my adult life on the two men who lay buried, side by side, on that hill in Peterborough,” she writes; “I wondered if my life was one big mistake.” Despite the support of a new partner, Tim, challenges persisted. She was fed up with the long Northeastern winters and disappointed by the gallery’s lack of success, so she decided to start anew in Florida. Tim readily agreed to join her, and the two set about planning a boat trip south via the Intracoastal Waterway. Busenbark recounts each step of their voyage, from preparing a seaworthy boat, named Little Prince (after Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s whimsical tale), to seeking safe harbor during storms. The trip had quieter moments, too, as when they enjoyed vivid sunsets and glasses of wine on the deck. Journey descriptions are interspersed with reflections on grief and growth, as well as historical vignettes from the towns they pass. The book’s strengths lie in Busenbark’s introspection and musings on healing: “Grief is different. Time does not heal the wound. Time grants the experience to learn how to continue to live.” The narrative lags when she deviates from these themes, such as by recounting the minutiae of repairing a generator or the logistics of their route, which blunts the story’s emotional impact and risks losing readers’ interest. Such attention to detail is necessary for planning a long trip, but it sometimes hinders the memoir’s pace.
A sometimes digressive but ultimately hopeful story of a widow’s life after loss.Pub Date: May 6, 2024
ISBN: 9798989472505
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Color Notes Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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