An inspiring story but one told in an often uninspired manner.
Motorcyclist and artist Dodwell recounts her globe-trotting travels and love affairs in this debut memoir.
The author was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1944to a policeman father and a homemaker mother. She loved to draw from an early age, but she writes that her father discouraged her from pursuing a career in fashion design. She ended up studying nursing and marrying a hardworking Yale Law School student–turned–naval officer who ended up making a lot of money in the financial industry. Dodwell was initially happy as a homemaker and dearly loved being a mother to her daughter, Maida, but she soon felt stifled in suburban Westport, Connecticut, and resentful that she was unable to pursue a career of her own. After the family moved to San Francisco, Dodwell took the opportunity to study art at the San Francisco Art Institute, and a whole new world began to open up to her. As her marriage started to fall apart due to infidelity and her husband’s resentment over her artistic interests, Dodwell discovered two new passions that would shape the rest of her life: motorcycles and travel. “What would you think about your mom getting a motorcycle?” she asked her daughter, when the latter was 12 years old. Her child responded, in typical kid fashion, “I’d be so embarrassed in front of my friends!” So, five years later, after Maida went off to college in 1989, Dodwell began taking long motorcycle journeys, the most remarkable of which was a solo round trip across the southern coast of Australia, from Melbourne to Perth.
In this remembrance, Dodwell recounts stories of her adventures around the world, including participation in the famous Peking to Paris Car Rally, a 43-day, 16,000-kilometer overland drive, with her co-driver, Gennie Obert. She also describes the design and construction of her Australia-themed homestead in Sonoma, California, which married her history of travel with her passion for artistic collaboration. Dodwell’s prose effectively captures her enthusiasm for new experiences, as when she recounts embarking on her trip across Australia: “At the top of the ridge, I took a left and was suddenly smacked in the face with the enormity of my crazy adventure. At that 1500-foot elevation I got my first glimpse of what lay before me—the biggest expanse of desert I had ever encountered.” Overall, Dodwell’s stories read easily. However, she tends not to offer many specifics. The result is a lot of summarizing, which creates a less immersive and engaging experience than one expects from travel writing. That said, Dodwell tells a compelling story of stepping outside of the prescribed gender roles of her era in a dramatic fashion. Her journeys and romances are the stuff that novels are made of, and they make for an affecting story. Even so, it’s easy to imagine a more compelling version of the book that’s structured less straightforwardly and focuses on a few specific experiences from her life in greater, more specific detail.
An inspiring story but one told in an often uninspired manner.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953596-22-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: The Publishing Portal
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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