A valuable guide to recognizing predatory behavior and surviving sexual abuse.
In this work that blends fiction and self-help advice, a psychotherapist traces the path to healing after suffering sexual abuse through the metaphor of a highly ritualized dance.
Elena and Cesar meet through the singles scene in their South Florida community. She is a newly divorced graduate student seeking a license to practice psychotherapy. He is a divorced FBI agent with a co-dependent relationship with his former wife and numerous drama-filled entanglements with ex-girlfriends. Elena is both attracted and overwhelmed by Cesar’s charm and attentive “love bombing.” His erratically possessive behavior sets off alarms immediately, and she almost ends their relationship after their first date. Increasingly wary, she calls off their romance time after time only to be lured back by Cesar’s combination of seduction and passive-aggressive behavior until it finally culminates in sexual assault. The story intersperses the development of Elena and Cesar’s thrilling and disturbing relationship with her later conversations with her therapist and a rape support group. Woven among these strands are seven tango lessons that teach Elena about the dynamic relationship of trust, control, and responsibility that develops between the leader and the follower in the passionate dance. Through therapy and dance, Elena begins to trace the roots of her trauma and the old wounds that made her vulnerable to the manipulations of a narcissistic man. The second section, titled “Psychological Insights,” ties Adamo’s own experience of rape to Elena and Cesar’s story in a more straightforward, mental health text, offering explanations and support on such topics as “Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Predatory People” and “What is Consent, Anyway?” The author’s choice to introduce her exploration of sexual abuse and narcissism with a fictionalized “case study” gives her narrative a dramatic pull, and the therapeutic chapters supply a cogent outline of “loving and leaving a narcissist.” While the arc of Elena and Cesar’s back-and-forth relationship seems agonizingly long, the metaphor of the tango provides an innovative approach to recovering from a toxic relationship and wresting strength and autonomy out of hopelessness and shame.
A valuable guide to recognizing predatory behavior and surviving sexual abuse. (glossary, resources, references, author bio)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72731-273-7
Page Count: 232
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2020
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
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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