Connoisseurs of literary memoir will enjoy Jarre's precise way of capturing emotional experiences.
Midcentury European novelist Jarre (1925-2016) recalls the lifetime of dislocations that formed her changing sense of self.
Originally published in Italy in 1987, the book is translated by Goldstein, known for her work on Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. Jarre’s memoir opens with Goldstein's comments and a critical introduction by Marta Barone, who is overseeing the reissue of Jarre's works in Italian, hoping to restore her to "her rightful place in Italian literature." Barone aptly characterizes the author's virtues in this lament: "Why have her extraordinary novels and her unique voice, cool and searching, yet ironic, tender, brutal, and astonishingly attentive to life and its details—why has all this, all together, not endured?" The memoir is divided into three parts: childhood, adolescence, marriage and motherhood. Born in Riga, Latvia, Jarre and her sister moved to Italy with their mother after their parents split up (her Jewish father later died in the Holocaust). They lived with their French-speaking, Protestant grandparents outside then-fascist Turin. Jarre shows how her writerly perspective emerged with this first dislocation. "Time entered my life when I arrived in Torre Pellice with my sister,” she writes. “It gave me for the first time a past…the story of my childhood was what remained to me of my preceding existence, since in the space of a few weeks I changed country, language, and family circle." She goes on to describe the herb garden that her mother planted in their new home. One of the throughlines of the book is Jarre’s difficult relationship with her seemingly cold mother. In the third section, in which she wrestles with the writing of this memoir, we see the two conferring about the details of that very passage. Like Nabokov's Speak, Memory, this book is more concerned with time and perspective than narrative storytelling, though Jarre is more like Ferrante in her lack of nostalgia and unflinching focus on the difficulties of relationships.
Connoisseurs of literary memoir will enjoy Jarre's precise way of capturing emotional experiences.Pub Date: June 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-939931-94-8
Page Count: 180
Publisher: New Vessel Press
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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