A gripping account of falling under the sway of a con artist weaponizing New Age spirituality.
Tamraz details her experience with a much older yogi grifter in this memoir.
In the 1990s, the author, a life coach and memoirist, was completing her undergraduate degree at Harvard when she met “Swami Arun” on a trip to India with James, her 15-years-older boyfriend, whose hold on her had recently “weakened.” Arun soon drew her into his “secret practice” of yoga, which included instructions to “press into the perineum, the small muscle between the anus and the vagina.” He eventually asked Tamraz for money and engaged her in a sexual relationship. After her first stint in India, the author returned home to New York City, where she had grown up with her divorced, New Age–oriented mother. But she soon married Arun, “the same age as Dad, thirty-three years older than me,” in France, where her wealthy, Lebanese-born fatherhad a professional base, and she earned a graduate degree in business. She worked various corporate jobs to support Arun’s lifestyle, which included drinking alcohol, smoking pot, and shopping. He launched a never-prosperous yoga school, where “Tao,” the spirit whom he channeled as part of his communion with “elders,” decided a young female employee must be his lover. This betrayal, coupled with a growing attraction to a work colleague, led Tamraz to divorce Arun, although not without struggling against a strongly embedded belief in his powers. The narrative is an intense and suspenseful memoir serving both as a cautionary tale and a dramatic depiction of masterful mind-control practiced on a vulnerable party. Through descriptions of her fractured family life and a recounting of Arun’s tactics, the author makes being duped by him believable and understandable. She also offers commendable insight into her own role in the dynamic and surprising empathy for her abuser by the story’s end.
A gripping account of falling under the sway of a con artist weaponizing New Age spirituality.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 978-1739377700
Page Count: 317
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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