A rangy, rambling assemblage that will appeal most to Dyer’s fans.
The prolific, award-winning writer reflects on endings, loose and otherwise.
In his latest unique work, Dyer, pondering Federer’s imminent retirement, delves into “things coming to an end, artists’ last works, time running out”—and whatever else strikes his fancy. Now 63, the author’s understated, witty prose, written amid the “interminable Covid moment,” carries him along on a jaunty, wide-ranging, personal stream-of-consciousness rumination as the clock ticks down. Obsessed with the concept of a “magnificent life whatever ruin comes in its wake,” Dyer opines on literature, film, art, philosophy, music, and, of course, tennis in numerous interconnected, journal-like entries. He opens with some riffs on the Doors’ sprawling epic “The End” before moving on to tennis star Andy Murray’s retirement announcement and how it affected him. The author discusses his admiration for Bob Dylan and his voice: “How could it not be shot to hell given what he’s put it through, the unbelievable demands he makes on it”? Then he jumps to Jack Kerouac, Boris Becker, and D.H. Lawrence’s ongoing refusal to confront death; the “dissolution of the physical world” in J.M.W. Turner’s late paintings; and Nietzsche’s life and work. Thinking about how “we love the idea of the last,” Dyer considers how Albert Bierstadt’s painting The Last of the Buffalo led to the end of his career, and a disquisition on attending Burning Man confronts the “indescribable wonders” he experienced. The author worries about going to his grave without ever having read this or that book or seen that film. Then it’s on to writers who wrote one book, found success too soon, or, like athletes, made a late comeback, and John Coltrane’s final phase. Concluding, Dyer turns for help to Louise Glück: “I think here I will leave you. It has come to seem / there is no perfect ending.” Quite true, as the author sometimes loses his way in this maze of wistful meanderings.
A rangy, rambling assemblage that will appeal most to Dyer’s fans.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-60556-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
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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