A lovely nautical memoir about chasing dreams to distant latitudes.
González tells of sailing the high seas with her husband in this debut travel memoir.
From almost the moment they met, the author knew that her future husband Andrés dreamed of sailing around the world. Their dating life was filled with hikes, kayaking, and short sailboat rides, but a long voyage seemed far out of reach: They would have to quit their jobs, sell their house, buy a boat, and live frugally off savings as they went. Still, González wanted to help Andrés achieve his dream, and before they were even married, they purchased a 34-foot Pacific Seacraft they named Ana María. Three years later, the boat and their lives were sufficiently ship-shape to finally begin their voyage—a two-year journey down the West Coast to Mexico and across the Pacific, island hopping all the way to New Zealand. Andrés, the more experienced sailor, was captain; González, the co-captain, took it upon herself to keep a detailed log of the trip, recording accounts of their adventures from snorkeling in French Polynesia to riding deadly storm swells off Cape Mendocino. (Sections of Andrés’ “Captain’s Log” also appear in the text.) In addition, she chronicled their daily existence aboard the ship, from the ever-changing menu and travelers they met along the way to the particular discomforts of the cramped craft. (In one memorable entry, the captain and co-captain grew so tired of changing into dry clothes while coming in and out of a squall that they simply began sailing naked.) González’s prose is as breezy as one would hope for someone tooling around the South Pacific. “Now, we’re not monsters,” she writes, about the birds who hitchhiked on their boat. “We know spotting Ana María must feel like a miraculous provision of much-needed respite, so we proposed a peace treaty: You can land and ride on the bow from here to Hiva Oa. You can ride on the warm radar…But NO sitting on the solar panels!” Here is a buoyantly escapist reading experience for seasoned sailors and daydreamers both.
A lovely nautical memoir about chasing dreams to distant latitudes.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798991166805
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Posada Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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
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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