A rich, heartwarming homage to a groundbreaking series.
Lea’s debut nonfiction work explores the dedicated fan base of an offbeat TV character.
The author writes that she was not expecting to fall in love with the lesbian protagonist of the BBC and HBO drama Gentleman Jack, based on the life of a real 19th-century historical figure: “I was stupefied and embarrassed because Anne Lister was, after all, dead,” Lea writes. “But far more mortifying and unexpected was my morphing into a 70-something fangirl.” The series, created by Sally Wainwright and starring Suranne Jones as the eponymous businesswoman, traveler, diarist, and top-hat wearer, has won dedicated fans around the world, particularly among lesbian viewers. This book collects the experiences and reflections of these “Lister Sisters” (a group that includes more than a few men), detailing their attachment to the show and the fascinating person who inspired it. The series, the author says, not only provided welcome lesbian representation on television, but also catalyzed new levels of self-esteem among its fans, spawning daring sartorial choices, career changes, and pilgrimages to Lister’s hometown of Halifax in West Yorkshire, England. Lea interviews and profiles more than 60 of these fans; most hail from the United States or the United Kingdom, but there are dispatches from such far-flung locales as New Zealand, India, the Philippines, Belgium, Singapore, Portugal, Serbia, and Brazil. The fan base’s sense of the community comes up often in Lea’s interviews, as revealed in this comment by Johanna Pihlajamäki of Hämeenkyrö, Finland: “I just kept thinking how can there be this kind of group in this world….I’m in about 30 other groups, and there is something negative going on all the time. And then there’s the Lister Sisters with hundreds of people, and no one is aggressive and no one is ever disrespected.” Swift’s beautiful black-and-white illustrations effectively evoke the series’ period style. The book will be of greatest interest to readers who love the show, of course, but the work also succeeds as a rumination on lesbian representation in pop culture and the ways that fan communities create new opportunities for connection.
A rich, heartwarming homage to a groundbreaking series.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9621837-1-3
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.
A principled athlete strives for social justice.
Kaepernick forthrightly details the activism that earned him global renown but cost him his NFL career. In 2016, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback “was filled with disgust” after police shootings of fellow Black men in several American cities. Before a preseason game, he made a spontaneous decision: “It hit me in that moment that I should find a seat” during the national anthem. He did the same at two more games before reporters noticed. Kaepernick will forever be associated with “taking a knee” during the anthem, but he credits Eric Reid—a teammate who agreed with Kaepernick’s message—for suggesting that they kneel together during subsequent anthems. The protest changed everything for Kaepernick. President Trump vilified him. Kaepernick and his wife received death threats. And though he’d taken the 49ers to a Super Bowl, no teams would sign him. He will likely make news for his take on Jay-Z, whose lucrative partnership with the NFL was criticized as an attempt to launder the league’s reputation. Visiting Africa, where Kaepernick learns about “African leaders who willingly sold their own people to the enslavers,” he “couldn’t help but to think about Jay-Z and the NFL.” In opening chapters, Kaepernick recalls suffering traumatic racial abuse as a child. Being in “white spaces”—he was adopted by white parents—placed him “under a microscope every minute of every day.” He isn’t always nuanced, depicting some people he disagrees with as cartoonishly clueless. But his writing about how college and pro teams “lied” to him about injuries underlines his “feeling of being a disposable commodity.” A decade has passed since Kaepernick played in the NFL, but he stays fit in case “a team needing a QB” calls.
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781538777879
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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