A sometimes-unfocused but often witty and thought-provoking portrait of a showbiz life.
A gay man recounts his struggle to define himself while trying to find success as a dancer and singer in this debut memoir.
After a hardscrabble boyhood in San Francisco, 20-year-old Dane moved to New York City on a Juilliard ballet scholarship in 1975—the beginning of a long odyssey on the fringes of the arts and entertainment industry. He was a gifted dancer, but not quite superstar material; when his hopes of getting a spot in the storied American Ballet Theater company fizzled, he scrounged for other gigs. These included a contract with an Iranian ballet company in Tehran, which ended with his having to flee across the border to Turkey, and a stint with the all-male Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo troupe back in the United States. He lost both jobs because of poisonous office politics, he asserts, after his superior skills upstaged other, more powerful ensemble members. Seeking new horizons, Dane tried to launch a singing career with a Franco-Belgian record label that eventually went bankrupt; played the lover of then-unknown actor Madonna Ciccione in the low-budget indie film A Certain Sacrifice; produced his own play, which closed after three weeks; and made it through rough patches as a sex worker. He finally found steady employment in film and television as an extra in crowd scenes and in small parts as tough guys and waiters. Dane also had his share of romantic drama: His longtime boyfriend Gerard introduced him to the subculture of anonymous sex on the Hudson River waterfront and later succumbed to AIDS; and Bernard, another longtime boyfriend, made repeated suicide attempts.
Dane relates his misadventures in vivid prose with piquant character sketches—“Her bleached and permed locks and gruff demeanor create…a comical and fearsome impression of an aged peroxide abusing Shirley Temple doing her best Martha from ‘[Who’s Afraid of] Virginia Woolf’ ”—and evocative scenes of the not-so-fine arts: “This is no slick review,” he recalls of a strip-club audition, “this is take off your shirt, take off your shoes, hop around on one leg until you get out of your pants and underwear and then dance around naked and it really doesn’t matter what else you do.” It’s also a perceptive, if sometimes self-indulgent, portrait of a gay man in the post-Stonewall era, fighting to be himself as he weathers homophobic jibes and pressure to tone down the flamboyance (which he often resisted). There are some meandering passages in which Dane ponders his own image—“When did I become the person in this reflection?”—that bog the narrative down with an air of foggy narcissism. The memoir is more cogent and involving when the author looks outward at the social trappings of gender or the dank realities of sex: “He weighed a ton and smelled like an ashtray in a public toilet and I…couldn’t help but laugh to myself.” Readers will be captivated and amused by Dane as he pursues his starry-eyed hopes.
A sometimes-unfocused but often witty and thought-provoking portrait of a showbiz life.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-578-46328-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: HomoAmerican
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
