An absolutely fascinating work from a gifted storyteller.
A powerful memoir of a life driven by “a spirit of…extreme exophoria—that uncontrollable tendency of eyes to gaze outward.”
In her debut book, Daniel, a duel citizen of Nigeria and the U.S., tracks her life across Africa, Europe, and North America. In pursuit of a better life, her parents, who were professors at the university in Maiduguri (“birthplace of Boko Haram, the terrorist militia that specializes in kidnapping the girl child”), moved Daniel and her siblings to England, which she found “blanched, like all color had been boiled out of it,” compared to the “angry red” of her native land. Throughout the enchanting narrative, Daniel vividly shares her and her family’s traditions, customs, and religious views. However, in order to assimilate to English culture, she and her family had to forego many elements of Nigerian culture, including those of her tribe, Hausa-Fulani. The author writes potently about being “acutely wounded by the separation from my culture.” After nearly 10 years in England, her parents decided to move again, this time to Nashville. Daniel chronicles the racism she experienced and describes how she changed her first name to Mary-Alice in order to further assimilate. During return trips to Nigeria, the author began to feel embarrassment for being “noticeably Westernized,” while in the U.S., she felt “embarrassed by being identifiably African.” Overall, she believed she “no longer belonged anywhere.” Daniel writes memorably about how her religious views have changed over the years and ponders how different she might feel had she stayed in Nigeria. “My immediate family and I have shared a dozen residences across three continents,” she writes. A few pages later, she reflects that “because I come from nomads, I have a tenuous, less tactile relationship with place.” Daniel also acknowledges how, as immigrants, she and her family are “integral, even when we are not integrated.” Today, the author is “semi-settled” in California, a place that she has chosen for herself.
An absolutely fascinating work from a gifted storyteller.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-296004-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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