A gripping combination of haunting photos and plangent stories full of almost unbearably raw humanity.
The faces and voices of people living on the street are revealed in intimate detail in this searing collection of photographs and interviews.
For her fourth volume of literary-pictorial studies of homelessness, den Bok photographed street people in Toronto; Washington, D.C.; and Brisbane, Australia, while her father, Tim, asked questions about their lives and hardships, all in exchange for a $10 payment. Some of their hard-luck narratives have a picaresque specificity: Bill faced eviction because creditors seized his bank account; Ken went bankrupt four times because of his business partners’ drug addictions, a malicious prosecution, and a perfidious woman; Vaughan, an electrician, was homeless by choice because it was cheap and he disliked working. A few people are totally opaque—“Rick seems to be almost completely nonverbal, communicating more with grunts than with words”—while others recall a hazy rut of misfortune, substance abuse, and mental illness. The author’s subjects are articulate about the travails of homelessness, discussing in detail the pitfalls of shelter systems where fighting, theft, and bedbugs are rampant; strategies for surviving Toronto’s frigid winters—find a steam grate to camp over—and the havoc that Covid-19 lockdowns wrought on public bathroom access. (“They wouldn’t even let me use the emergency washrooms” at a hospital, complains Dana. “I was basically treated like an animal.”) Emotional deprivations are just as bitter: Many people talk of their loneliness and estrangement from relatives and of the hole in the heart left by a child they cannot see.
Den Bok’s black-and-white portraits—extreme close-ups that highlight caked dirt and every spike of stubble—are arresting. They include aging King Lears who sport unkempt beards and wild white hair, with one pointing an accusing finger pistol-style at the camera; women with pleading eyes, their creased, spotted faces a road map of wrong turns; and younger men shrouded in blankets and hoodies, half-seen and menacing. Her renditions of her subjects’ conversations seem artless, but in fact she deftly arranges their ramblings into telling evocations of their characters and predicaments. Their soliloquies are sometimes sheer madness—“I fought against Hitler….I fought in Canada because most of it was Chinese….I was a five-star general, a fifteen-star general”—and at other times prosaic accounts of the chaos of mere poverty. (“So, um, I moved to Brampton, and the landlord ended up, ah, screwing over all the tenants, and, ah, he ended up getting a written notice but didn’t tell us tenants, and, ah, we all ended up on the streets on, ah, Christmas.”) Often, they meet in the middle, where people dimly recognize the roles their misfiring behaviors played in their blighted lives. (“I’m, ah…I try to get off the streets,” says Mary Ellen. “I try every day now. Yeah, I…you know, when I was…I don’t know what I’m doing. But mostly in the summer I…I don’t know if it’s some sort of drug I got into….I’m getting into fights every other day.”) Yet as extreme as their circumstances and dysfunctions are, den Bok’s subjects voice yearnings—says Cory of his 13-year-old daughter, “I’d like to see her. I haven’t been having much luck….Oh well! Things are getting better. Things will always get better”—that readers will find heartbreakingly familiar.
A gripping combination of haunting photos and plangent stories full of almost unbearably raw humanity.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-1220114752
Page Count: 134
Publisher: Europe Books
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.
A New Jersey senator’s moral manifesto.
Booker situates his narrative in the wake of his 2025 record-breaking 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, an act of physical endurance and moral insistence that serves as its animating example. Though not framed as memoir, the episode implicitly positions Booker himself as a model of the virtues he argues are essential to democratic life. Organized around 10 qualities, including agency, vulnerability, truth, perseverance, and grace, the book advances a clear thesis. “In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail.” Booker illustrates this claim through figures such as the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose willingness to endure sacrifice for principle anchors the book’s moral lineage, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose composure under public scrutiny is presented as an example of dignity as civic strength. These portraits reinforce Booker’s belief that character, sustained over time, can shape public life, even when political outcomes remain uncertain or incomplete. He supplements these examples with personal stories drawn from family, faith, and community, delivered with emotional conviction and a tone that remains affirming and carefully calibrated. Much of the narrative reads like an expansive commencement address, earnest and reassuring, offering moral affirmation at moments when readers might reasonably expect sharper confrontation. That rhetorical choice ultimately defines the book’s limits. Booker acknowledges political conflict and compromise, but rarely examines them in depth, and while urging leaders to take moral risks, he avoids sustained reflection on how some of his own political decisions have tested the virtues he promotes. The result is a principled but self-conscious work that affirms shared values while offering little guidance for navigating power and accountability.
A hopeful civic sermon favoring inspiration over concrete prescriptions.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781250436733
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
