Erudite essays from one of the world’s finest writers.
A celebrated novelist offers personal essays on religion, literature, his Irish upbringing, and his cancer scare.
“All of us have a landscape of the soul, places whose contours and resonances are etched into us and haunt us,” Tóibín writes in this magnificent volume. These previously published essays show the landscape of the author’s soul, mapping out events that have shaped him as a person and writer. He begins with the most devastating imaginable: “It all started with my balls,” he begins an essay that recounts his ordeal of having “cancer of the testicles that had spread to a lymph node and to one lung.” Grim humor punctuates the piece, as when he describes the time he couldn’t get to the hospital during an emergency because Pope Francis was visiting Dublin and had clogged the streets. The last three popes are the focus of the book’s coruscating middle section. A 1995 essay on John Paul II describes the belief that, under his pontificate, “there will be no change, and no discussion about change,” regarding women priests, bans on contraception, and more—a belief that proved correct. The other middle essays focus on the Catholic Church’s attempts to blame its many sex-abuse scandals on “homosexuality, not celibacy,” and on the authoritarian Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who, as Pope Francis, suddenly became the “poster boy for informality, humility, and good-natured cheerfulness.” In the title piece, Tóibín movingly recounts his upbringing in Ireland and what it was like “to be gay in a repressive society.” Essays on writers Marilynne Robinson, Francis Stuart, and John McGahern and a moving epilogue on the pandemic conclude the book. Throughout, the poetry of Tóibín’s prose is as impressive as always. In that title piece, he writes that his mother was “what most of us still write for: the ordinary reader, curious and intelligent and demanding, ready to be moved and changed.” Readers like her will savor every page of this book.
Erudite essays from one of the world’s finest writers.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8520-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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