An imperfect account of a man’s investigation into the life of an old flame.
With this debut memoir, Blossom attempts to excavate the secrets his long-lost love took to her grave.
In 2020, in the middle of heart surgery, Blossom found himself floating toward a light at the end of a tunnel. During this near-death experience, he saw the apparition of his college sweetheart, a woman who had died decades before. The encounter was life-changing. “I am no Emerson,” admits the author early in the book. “I hate writing essays. I never could write poetry. But now, her memory sanctions the words to flow as a brook from my mind. Her presence bade me to tell her narrative. Our story of true love.” With this memoir, Blossom meditates on the one that got away: Marilyn “Mimsy” Cosic. Blossom met Mimsy during his freshman year in college, paying for her coffee one morning in the student union. Blossom felt a strong attraction to her immediately, but it took the reticent Mimsy a month of platonic flirtation before she was willing to give her heart to him. After a whirlwind romance that lasted the rest of the school year, they parted ways with the intention of visiting each other that summer, but they never did. In fact, Blossom never saw Mimsy again, at least not in the waking world. It wasn’t until years later, after his vision of Mimsy during his near-death experience, that Blossom decided to try to piece together the woman’s life and find the answers to questions that had haunted him for years. What was the great hurt—“more than you will ever know or can ever imagine”—that Mimsy referenced early in their courtship? And what of her brief marriage that ended in a terrible house fire that left Mimsy severely burned? And why did Mimsy’s surviving sister refuse to answer any questions about Mimsy’s past? Blossom’s quest for closure became an obsessive investigation into alcoholism, sexual assault, and even murder.
Blossom may not be an Emerson (as the strained pun in the book’s title attests). Even so, his earnest prose is mostly charming, as here where he describes his immediate attraction to Mimsy: “Intensity is the spark that ignites the relationship, the extraordinary strength of attraction, sometimes the ‘love at first sight’ phenomenon. (Ellen Barkin explained this to Al Pacino in the movie Sea of Love.) I experienced that with Mimsy when I first met her: physical attraction, mental and emotional compatibility, and a fervent desire to be with her.” His examination of Marilyn’s tragic life is not quite insightful enough to make for engaging reading. The mysteries, such as they are, do not interest the reader as much as they do the author. The most intriguing aspect of the story—Blossom’s consuming obsession with a woman he dated briefly half a century before—is left mostly unexamined despite the fact that he remains married to his wife, Judith, for the entirety of his investigation. While Blossom does find a bit of closure in the form of a remarkably misplaced note, the journey is likely a bit too ordinary to find a wide readership.
An imperfect account of a man’s investigation into the life of an old flame.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798986130275
Page Count: 181
Publisher: The MC Foundation
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 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
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