A finely detailed, enveloping look at life in two disparate countries.
Schofield’s memoir chronicles his turbulent life in America and Greece.
The author, who hails from California, first visited Greece as a tourist in 1976. On a subsequent trip to the country, he decided to stay. He initially earned a living by teaching English, “traveling to the homes of young Athenians, tutoring them for the American TOEFL exam and the British First Certificate and Advanced.” Eventually he looked for “a quiet place to write, something simple and far away from tourists.” He wound up renting a house in a remote area on the island of Kýthnos. His “whitewashed hut in the Cycladic style,” nicknamed the “Cyclops Cave,” is the inspiration for the memoir’s title. (The Cyclops Cave certainly has its peculiarities; at one point, Schofield puzzles over what sort of creature had taken some bites out of a peach.) Interspersed with scenes from Schofield’s life in Greece are memories from the author’s rocky upbringing. At the age of 4, he was handed off by his father, a Greyhound bus driver, to a foster family living in Fresno, California. One of the stipulations of the foster care was that his birth mother would never be allowed to see him, “no matter what.” He was raised for years by a man and woman he called Nan and Papa. Nan was in her 20s and came from a Catholic Italian family; Papa was a Cherokee in his 40s. Papa could be a playful practical jokester, though he could also turn violent and was prone to severe mood swings. Schofield was 8 when his father married a woman named Nora; he left Nan and Papa for Sacramento. Life with his father and Nora proved difficult, and it wound up being a temporary arrangement. The author spent a period in his teens bouncing between Catholic school and various homes.
As the memoir moves back and forth between different periods, it offers some potent scenes. In Greece, the author encountered rural people who used every part of the animals they slaughtered and were unperturbed by the associated sights. He remembers seeing three slaughtered baby goats with “congealed blood caked along the edge of their open lips” as if they were “three singers from the dead crooning into one microphone.” Schofield recounts an occasion when, back in the U.S., he visited Papa in a “dingy motel off I-80,” where he found the now-old man “sweating on crumpled sheets, back propped up on a stained pillow, his rusty wheelchair folded up in a corner, no nurse in sight.” When he lived with Nora, she made it clear that it was her house, governed by her rules. The author recalls not being allowed to play on the lawn: “All I can do is sit on the patio or stand in the driveway and throw my tennis ball against the garage. Over and over.” In Catholic school, Schofield was punished for smoking cigarettes by being forced to smoke a cigar. The memoir teems with such vivid recollections, transporting readers to memorable moments.
A finely detailed, enveloping look at life in two disparate countries.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781948598903
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Open Books Press
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2026
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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