A fast-paced, detailed chronicle of a life marked by struggle.
Gilchrist presents a memoir of escaping an oppressive childhood, only to confront new demons in adulthood.
Born in 1962 to a devout mother and a religion-skeptic father in small-town Levittown, Pennsylvania, Gilchrist chronicles an idyllic early childhood spent cruising through the neighborhood on a green Schwinn Stingray with friends, devouring library books on science and philosophy, and contemplating the cosmos, as described in SF movies and fiction and nonfiction books about outer space by authors such as Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Carl Sagan. However, his early life, he writes, was marred by cruelty at the hands of his mother, who worried that his interest in science and literature was demonic. When his father, his biggest supporter and the household’s stabilizing voice of reason, died of lung cancer in 1974, the author was effectively raised by his mother and her colleagues at the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Kingdom Hall. What follows is a series of personal tragedies, which Gilchrist describes with incisive, visceral honesty. Emboldened by church elders, the author’s mother encouraged him to drop out of high school and work for the church full-time. Regarding his later efforts to escape from the church and build a life for himself—and to stay loyal to the curious, optimistic child he once was—Gilchrist effectively tells of confronting the real-life demons of drug abuse, a lack of housing, police brutality, and entanglements with dangerous criminals as he drifted from one job to another, struggling to keep himself afloat. The author’s telling is rich with sensory description (“Lightning bugs were taunting each other with pops of sun yellow light”), insightful about the various figures in his life, and suffused with gratitude for the people and coincidences that helped him through his most difficult moments. His sense of humor also brings a much-needed bit of levity to a story laden with hardships, reminding readers that there’s always joy to be found, even in life’s darkest moments.
A fast-paced, detailed chronicle of a life marked by struggle.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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