A frequently rewarding memoir of coming of age in the 1960s.
Antil describes his rural childhood in the 1950s and ’60s in this memoir.
In some ways, the author’s childhood was like one long summer at camp—he and his seven siblings were raised on a sprawling 84-acre Community Conservation Corps–built park property his parents bought at the end of the Depression and rehabilitated over the course of the 1940s. The seventh of eight children, Antil enjoyed an idyllic upbringing surrounded by the hills and waterfalls of Central New York. Jutting from a nearby cliff that overlooked the property was the eponymous big white rock, where the young Antil would sit and think about the world and his life, reflecting on events from the eruption of a new war in Korea to a satisfying and profitable day of selling hot dogs with a friend. His childhood was characterized in part by the schemes of his father, a commercial bakery owner, which included building a bomb shelter to protect the family during the height of the Cold War. (“My father’s plan was that the flat roof of the bomb shelter would serve as a sun deck off the living room, as if it would mask the structure’s hidden agenda, its fictional purpose of withstanding a hydrogen bomb blast.”) The author, who would eventually grow to a height of 6 feet, 10 inches, tried to resist “the tall fellow’s sport” (“playing basketball would be a charade,” he thought, “a ridiculous cliche”). Eventually, however, he was urged onto the court, where he played well enough to help his team win a championship his junior year of high school. His senior year saw him switching schools and sleeping on a cot above a partially constructed ice cream parlor in Syracuse—one of his father’s failed business ventures. With humor and a great sense of time and place, Antil spins stories of his coming of age in this unlikely setting.
The author has a novelistic sense of detail, writing of his family members in a way that makes them seem slightly larger than life: “My father’s entrance coming in the house and into the light of the dining room was as matter-of-fact as a ship’s captain…He offered no formal greeting or smile; he paced about as if the meeting was a necessary interruption to a whirlwind he was riding on.” The narrative is episodic, offering short vignettes that range from the incidental to the comic to the unexpectedly poignant. After a fairly jocular story about the “sex talk” he received from his father, Antil reveals the significantly more earnest counsel his sisters received, which he only learned of years later: “If you get in trouble, bring the baby home. We’ll raise it.” Together, these anecdotes perhaps don’t amount to quite enough to engage an audience with no connection to the author’s previous books or to the Central New York region. Even so, there are many wonderful moments here that capture not only America at mid-century but also an off-beat family whose way of life, for better or for worse, feels quite remote from the present day.
A frequently rewarding memoir of coming of age in the 1960s.Pub Date: April 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798988644835
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Little York Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
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