A vivid (and improbable) account of aliens among us.
A woman recalls her encounters with extraterrestrials—and the ramifications for life on Earth—in this debut memoir.
In her wide-ranging book, Star jumps right into the meat of the matter: In the 1980s, she was contacted by the “Ultraterrestrials” who form the High Spiritual Council and the Galactic Star Federation, congregations of superadvanced aliens. They asked her to become an ambassador to the “Star Kin,” who had separated from their Earth Kin more than 10,000 years ago. The author recalls that she was requested to work with a select band of likewise mentally advanced humans in order to prevent disasters on Earth. The Galactic Earth Council was born in 2010, comprising the only people on the planet who know what Star calls “the Truth of Truths”: that humans are not alone in the universe and that the cosmos is in fact teeming with life. This group also recognizes that the Star Kin seek an “Awakening” so that they and their Earth Kin can be reunited. “We are one humanity, in relation to each other,” she writes, “each with a gift from the Creator to be respected by all present.” The work includes testimonials from other members of the galactic council as well as the author’s many recollections of dealing with the Star Kin here on Earth, including moments when the vast armada of the Federation’s spacecraft paused overhead in the sky, “allowing us to see the glory of their amazing ships in many different sizes and shapes.” Star’s evocative book is enthusiastically written and will appeal to fans of UFO literature. But other readers will hit the wall of credulity almost immediately since the author opens her memoir by describing how the Star Kin helped cap the leaking BP–operated Macondo Prospect during the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe of 2010. Every moment of the disaster, including its end, was completely documented and filmed and showed no alien involvement. Likewise, no alien armadas have recently entered Earth’s atmosphere and loitered in plain view. But such things will hardly be obstacles to devotees of this kind of vibrant galactic narrative.
A vivid (and improbable) account of aliens among us.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 253
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fascinating, major work that will spark endless debates.
An epic cradle-to-grave biography of the king of pop art from Gopnik (co-author: Warhol Women, 2019), who served as chief art critic for the Washington Post and the art and design critic for Newsweek.
With a hoarder’s zeal, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) collected objects he liked until shopping bags filled entire rooms of his New York town house. Rising to equal that, Gopnik’s dictionary-sized biography has more than 7,000 endnotes in its e-book edition and drew on some 100,000 documents, including datebooks, tax returns, and letters to lovers and dealers. With the cooperation of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the author serves up fresh details about almost every aspect of Warhol’s life in an immensely enjoyable book that blends snappy writing with careful exegeses of the artist’s influences and techniques. Warhol exploded into view in his mid-40s with his pop art paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans and silkscreens of Elvis and Marilyn. However, fame didn’t banish lifelong anxieties heightened by an assassination attempt that left him so fearful he bought bulletproof eyeglasses. After the pop successes, Gopnik writes, Warhol’s life was shaped by a consuming desire “to climb back onto that cutting edge,” which led him to make experimental films, launch Interview magazine, and promote the Velvet Underground. At the same time, Warhol yearned “for fine, old-fashioned love and coupledom,” a desire thwarted by his shyness and his awkward stance toward his sexuality—“almost but never quite out,” as Gopnik puts it. Although insightful in its interpretations of Warhol’s art, this biography is sure to make waves with its easily challenged claims that Warhol revealed himself early on “as a true rival of all the greats who had come before” and that he and Picasso may now occupy “the top peak of Parnassus, beside Michelangelo and Rembrandt and their fellow geniuses.” Any controversy will certainly befit a lodestar of 20th-century art who believed that “you weren’t doing much of anything as an artist if you weren’t questioning the most fundamental tenets of what art is and what artists can do.”
A fascinating, major work that will spark endless debates.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-229839-3
Page Count: 976
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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