A sharply written, heartfelt dating account that proves both enriching and amusing.
Following the untimely death of her husband, a former attorney recounts embarking on an uncertain return to the dating scene in this debut memoir.
The book opens with Weiss lying awake at 4 in the morning obsessing over her newly created profile for an online Jewish dating community. Her husband, George, had died 14 months previously after being diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. Her high school sweetheart, George died at the age of 53, leaving the author a widow four months shy of her 50th birthday. The couple were “introverted only children who never grew up” and who lived in their “own little world of two.” She admits that the prospect of dating again felt like throwing herself into “dire straits.” Weiss recalls her various dating experiences while sharing details of her past life with George. One early date, an Alec Baldwin look-alike, felt compelled to tell her about his former partner’s breast enhancements. After sex, another man told her that he was too restless to sleep with a person in his bed. Weiss later became disillusioned with online dating, dismayed that she had become the equivalent of “the girl in high school the popular guy did in his Trans Am but didn’t take to the prom.” She decided to retreat from the dating community, conceding that the “grinning redhead” in her profile photograph “wasn’t me.” The author instead turned to writing, beginning a master’s degree, and in doing so set out on an unexpected journey to facing and understanding her grief.
Weiss is a dryly amusing writer who tells it like it is: “I watch movies about widowed people and throw cocktail olives at the screen.” Despite the memoir’s somber subject matter, it is peppered with many such moments of levity. The author is unafraid to broach the subject of her “reawakening” sex drive and often does so with a hilarious bluntness: “ ‘Did you use Viagra?’ I asked as I tied the sash on my new black silk bathrobe. I was puzzled by the disconnect between the erection and the ennui.” The book’s humor is balanced by moments of reflection that can waver between the tender and the brutally self-critical: “He was a lover who made me feel alive. I told myself I was being a realist. He loved me in his own way….Now I know I was being an idiot. Not so brave after all.” Weiss also writes carefully sculpted sentences, drawing on simple yet poignant imagery: “I could have told Ben what real pain looked like, about George’s last days, the ones I kept going over, measuring them out like spools of black ribbon.” The senses of searching and disillusionment conveyed here are ones that readers who have lost spouses will closely relate to: “Dating left me wary, and I missed the softness I’d had when I was married, when I was truly loved.” Still, the memoir builds toward a moment of strength and lucidity. This is a deeply personal story but one that Weiss shares with a beguiling openness and wit.
A sharply written, heartfelt dating account that proves both enriching and amusing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-237-0
Page Count: 280
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
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