A potentially rich document of medical life, undone by awkward prose and unrevealing narration.
A young doctor’s skills are put to the test when he’s assigned to work in a remote Iranian village in Maany’s slender memoir.
The debut author details his experience as a country doctor, beginning in the late 1960s, fairlylate in the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Though Maany had ambitions of coming to the United States, he was first required to complete two years of military service in his home country of Iran. To fulfill his requirement, he signed up with the Sepahe-Behdasht—the titular “Wellbeing Guard,” also known as the “Army of Health”—to practice medicine in a far-off part of the country. Maany chose to work in the small village of Resket Sofla. Although each of this memoir’s chapters tells self-contained stories, their overarching focus quickly becomes the hazards of working as a doctor in isolated, often treacherous rural terrain. Maany became an essential health care worker, serving a 50-mile radius around Resket—a region seemingly plagued by inclement weather and dangerous wildlife and where the main means of travel was on horseback. The book’s greatest strength is Maany’s attention to quotidian routines; images of domesticated animals drinking from a nearby fountain by Resket’s rundown clinic, for example, help give the memoir a rich sense of place, and passages that dive into the rustic, ordinary lives of villagers are where the book’s at its finest. However, it’s hindered by repetitive phrasing and a lack of depth. Maany very often “note[s]” his observations, overusing the word and creating an unfortunate distance between his narration and the reader, and too often, he simply lists people he helped and places where he worked, never allowing one to get a sense of his firsthand experience. Much of the book is written in the past or pluperfect tenses, but there are occasional slips (“I have been confined” opens one chapter); the memoir does eventually barrel into the present day, following the doctor as he completed his service and moved to the U.S., ultimately ending with pat truisms about “peace of mind.”
A potentially rich document of medical life, undone by awkward prose and unrevealing narration.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-52-558184-7
Page Count: 88
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
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
SEEN & HEARD
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