A sharp, sad tale of bitterness and regret.
An aggrieved son reveals family strife.
In his debut memoir, novelist Sorrentino, a National Book Award finalist, creates an unvarnished portrait of a family characterized by “recrimination, sadness, jealousy, grief, despair.” Growing up, he saw his father, award-winning novelist and poet Gilbert Sorrentino (1929-2006), as “patient, charismatic, and outrageously funny, the life of the party that began for me as soon as he disengaged himself from his work each day.” His mother, Victoria Ortiz, on the other hand, was impatient, sour, and angry. “My mother’s anger,” writes the author, “was the latent condition of our household, awaiting its moment to jet, boiling, from the place where she kept it ready.” Anyone and anything could enrage her: neighbors, her son’s friends, an object misplaced, a digression from the detailed daily schedule she posted (including “the time of day [she] had set aside for my bowel movement”), and Christopher’s attitudes and behavior. At 16, the therapist he saw each week pointed out to him “the tone of voice I apparently habitually used—hostile, suspicious, mocking.” He sounded like his mother, and he fears, even now, that he has inherited her “eerie fatalism” and “need to blame.” Venting about his mother’s abuse—and, he came to realize, his father’s complicity—Sorrentino tries to understand the woman who was “unfathomable” to him: “now beacon, now sea.” Identified as Black on her birth certificate, she had rejected her heritage, running “from every implication that might attach to being a Puerto Rican girl from the South Bronx.” She felt her life had ended at 25, when Christopher was born, and she isolated herself from family and made no friends. As the author writes, trapped “inside my father’s particular neediness, her refusal to refuse him even as she showered him with her contempt and anger, will remain a mystery.” Neither parent emerges as sympathetic in a well-written memoir that betrays enduring resentment.
A sharp, sad tale of bitterness and regret.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64622-042-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
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 determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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