Proof that more isn’t necessarily better.
A collection of the sexual fantasies of anonymous women.
Actress Anderson, who solicited sexual fantasies from women as part of her research for playing a sex therapist in the British comedy-drama Sex Education and published them in Want (2024), returns with more of the same in her appropriately titled sequel. Anderson, who writes earnest introductions to each of the book’s five sections, views it as a liberating feminist project of “profound self-reflection and personal growth.” The contributors to the volume come from 50 countries and are identified by age range, ethnic group or nationality, relationship status, and other markers; the majority are relatively young Brits. Most have no children, many categorize themselves as having disabilities, and a good percentage identify as bisexual/pansexual. A surprising number confess that they have had no sexual experience in real life. Their fantasies range from brief paragraphs to a page or two. More homogeneous than one might expect, and less transgressive, the book has a distinct tendency toward romance-novel prose. Once in a while, it veers into unusual territory. One woman has eyes for an octopus, and another imagines an orgiastic encounter while “suspended in a sea of spaghetti meatballs in a tomato sauce.” But most stick to more conventional scenarios of dominating, submitting, or being adored. “In my fantasies, my old lovers come crawling back to me, confessing their devotion,” one writes. Lesbians fantasize about being or making love with men, straight women about having encounters with woman. “I want to make love instead of dinner,” says one, understandably. Individually, these stories range from sad to touching to erotic to (too infrequently) amusing. Collectively, they’re like listening with decreasing patience to a long series of people reciting their dreams, more enticing to the teller than the listener.
Proof that more isn’t necessarily better.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781419777318
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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