Unplugged, refreshingly off the hook, and consistently entertaining.
A journalist and bestselling author reflects on being a 50-something “girl gone gray” in a series of hilarious personal essays.
Notaro, the author of three novels and numerous essay collections, begins her latest in a state of wonderment: Somehow, five decades of hard living had not managed to land her “in rehab, prison, or an urn.” Her roots looked like “someone had clearly poured powdered sugar on my head,” and her midlife had rendered her socially and sexually invisible. As the author shows, getting older is not easy, even for a hardened, punk rock–loving Gen Xer like Notaro, who had survived everything from Hamburger Helper to Aqua Net. She now had to deal with new challenges, including vanishing eyebrow hair; sagging breasts and ankles that “look like a python who snuck out of its cage at a pet store and paid a visit to a colony of rats”; and making grown-up decisions like taking an office job with the benefits she needed for her ill husband, a job in which she and other graying women were constantly ignored by younger colleagues. Turning 50 also meant a colonoscopy for a body that had already endured years of medical indignities, including gynecologists coming at her “with ultrasound-enabled dildo[s]” or radiologists sandwiching her chest on equipment that transformed breasts into “the center of a plexiglass panini.” Musing on the aging process itself, Notaro wonders at the irony of being told about the facts of life before she understood what they meant, then being left in middle age to watch her body change and hormones die “like they’re on a muddy battlefield in France in 1917.” Witty and full of sarcastic energy, the author fearlessly tackles what it means to get old not only as a modern woman, but as a member of the “coolest”—if at times clueless—generation of the late 20th century.
Unplugged, refreshingly off the hook, and consistently entertaining.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-3352-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
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
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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