Fans of the Fifty Shades series will undoubtedly find much to savor in this ribald, risqué, and captivating remembrance.
Holistic sexuality educator and coach LaVey shares a life rich with experimentation and eroticism.
Early on in this debut memoir, the author writes dramatically of boarding a bus in New Hampshire—the beginning of years of nomadic wanderings in such locales as Wisconsin (where she pursued a Wiccan-Shamanistic apprenticeship), Pennsylvania, and Central America. She also writes of the happiness and complexity of raising a child as a single parent. However, the memoir centers on LaVey’s sexual awakening, which started when she began a career as an exotic dancer. She entertainingly depicts these early days, graphically describing the pain of a first waxing, wobbling on 6-inch heels “like a giraffe on stilts,” and mastering the art of making money at a strip club. “Stripping walked me down the aisle to kink,” she writes, and her chronicle smoothly transforms into an account of her participation in BDSM subculture. Along the way, she vividly describes sexual experiences, a botched romance, and successfully overcoming drug addiction. She also weaves in the incremental evolution of her dominatrix persona, “Evil Kitty,” as well as varied ruminations about the nature of religion and the intricate dance of sexual dominance and submission. LaVey’s prose has an unfettered honesty as she proudly displays the joys, scars, triumphs, disappointments, and hard-won lessons of her lifestyle. The tone of the narrative is educational and never judgmental or arrogant, allowing readers to understand the author on several different levels—as the daughter of a demanding mother, as a devoted parent, as a dedicated sex worker, and as a formidable, respected person.
Fans of the Fifty Shades series will undoubtedly find much to savor in this ribald, risqué, and captivating remembrance.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-435-6
Page Count: 296
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
