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
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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