An intriguing but uneven account of a movie-land love story steeped in Hollywood glamour.
A passionate love affair between an actor and a model ends in tragedy in this partially fictionalized memoir set in 1960s Hollywood.
Long before Eric Fleming got his big break with a leading role on the television series Rawhide, he was Edward Heddy Jr., born in Southern California and raised during the Depression. Escaping the constant physical abuse of his father, young Fleming hopped a train and took up the harsh life of a street urchin, stealing in order to eat and trading his father’s beatings for those of his teenage hoodlum bosses. He joined the Navy’s Construction Battalion during World War II. When a terrible accident deformed his face, Navy doctors were able to perform reconstructive surgery that left him more handsome than ever. Rebranded as Eric Fleming, he was already a successful actor in 1963 when he met Garber, a “Manhattan model/showgirl” whose fast-paced social life included men with Mafia connections. Despite the fact that he had a blind date with Garber’s roommate, Fleming and the author fell for each other at first sight and immediately became inseparable. Both shared a love-hate relationship with the glitzy but shallow allure of the “Hollyweird” movie culture, and Fleming saw his relationship with Garber as his ticket to escaping the scene for a peaceful life in Hawaii. Financial ruin at the hands of a shady accountant forced him to accept a role in another film, with disastrous results. The author has taken on an interesting challenge in writing this memoir in both her voice and Fleming’s. Though mention is made of his lifelong journal-keeping, Garber does not credit his diaries with providing the material written from the actor’s viewpoint. The hard-boiled style is appropriate and captivating in a portrait of mid-20th-century Los Angeles, as when the author recalls purring: “I liked men who shelled out bread for my Manhattan penthouse.” But this hard edge sometimes slides into mean-spiritedness, including a few scenes of homophobia and fat shaming. Hardest to understand is Garber’s choice to devote almost half the narrative to the on-location film shoot that ended Fleming’s life on the Amazon River in Peru while omitting any account of his no doubt thrilling journey from injured Seabee to acclaimed TV star.
An intriguing but uneven account of a movie-land love story steeped in Hollywood glamour.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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 2025 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.
