Lyrical and cleareyed insight into farming from a writer devoted to both crafts.
A writer and transient farmer chronicles multiple seasons of work and life.
In her debut memoir, spanning four years of her life, Gaydos proceeds chronologically according to the season. Early on, she introduces Graham, an old friend and painter with whom she began a romantic relationship; that bond forms a constant amid the temporary settings of her jobs. Gaydos clearly loves Graham, as she also loves writing and her family, but they are secondary to the work she has chosen. Despite her other loves, “there is the problem that I am promised to the farm.” Each of the farms where she has worked may have different specialties in different locations, but they are alike in their rural settings, menial pay, and painstaking labor. Gaydos describes the realities of farm life with honest precision, neither indulging in unnecessary dramatizing nor shying away from the numerous harsh realities. “The rooster named Commander succumbs to the breeding of flies,” she writes. “He is under the care of the three-year-old….Commander isn’t getting better. One day the farmer takes him out of his cage and cuts off his head with a shovel, [a] compassionate act.” The most affecting passages focus on the people the author met in the communities where she has lived. Gaydos describes an evening spent at the Lebanon Valley Speedway’s annual Eve of Destruction demolition derby event, a spectacle that was marred by the death of a driver a few years prior, killed when his RV collapsed upon impact with a Jeep. Despite the tragedy, “a lot of people wanted to keep the show going….Someone in town told me…that people die what seems like every other year on this track.” The incident illustrates in dramatic fashion what Gaydos paints in broad strokes throughout her book, a complex and fraught portrait of a lifestyle that is simultaneously protective, precarious, and resistant to change.
Lyrical and cleareyed insight into farming from a writer devoted to both crafts.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-31895-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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