The few amusing bits aren’t worth enough to slog through the rest.
Dark humor is pushed to its limits in this debut collection of essays.
David, the 26-year-old co-creator of the web series “Eighty-Sixed” and daughter of Larry David, mines her anxiety and depression for material in essays that often lean more disconcertingly sad than funny. Several of the pieces are prefaced by excerpts from a 2007 neuropsychological evaluation of the author, and the collection features three sets of “Tweets I Would Tweet If I Weren't Morally Opposed to Twitter,” which include “Ways I like to pass time: Think of all the ways I can kill myself without leaving the room I'm currently in,” and “The human body is amazing; I can't believe I can have this level of internal anguish and not have imploded yet.” While some readers may find these observations sarcastically amusing, others may genuinely worry about the author. Other essays are clever: “I have urban dictionary open and I’m ready to sext”; “What if I just gave in and made my Instagram bio ‘Larry David’s daughter.’ ” In the longest piece, David explores a high-profile breakup, documenting her ex's failings as a “cripplingly codependent” individual given to blackouts and self-harm and recording her sorrow during a post-breakup safari trip to South Africa with her family. “I wanted to self-induce a coma and not wake up for years, but even years didn’t seem like it would be enough time,” she writes. In another selection, the author makes a list of things showing that “God Is Definitely Real,” which include puppies and kittens, fruit, coffee, mint, and “alcohol/weed.” The majority of David’s commentary is more banal than inventive: After getting a cat to ease her anxiety, she got anxious about the cat’s inevitable death. She reports that social media can be mind-numbing. She shares her unhappiness about being “almost pretty” and her “self-loathing” about realizing that “my taste in men is straight-up trash.”
The few amusing bits aren’t worth enough to slog through the rest.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-19702-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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 frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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