An engrossing work about the explosiveness of secrets exposed.
In this memoir, a man recounts the emotional and legal fallout of the shocking discovery that his father led a secret double life.
Zimmerman grew up idolizing his father, Norman, and considered him his best friend. And while Norm was often absent, presumably because of his work commitments, he was a deeply involved parent who made his loving presence felt. The author grew up in Winnetka, a tony suburb of Chicago, and by all conventional measures lived a normal life and a reasonably happy one. But he came to doubt everything about Norm when he was confronted by an extraordinary revelation. For 42 years, Norm managed to secretly maintain a double life—not only was he married to Zimmerman’s mother, Ann, but also to another woman, Margaret, with whom he had two children. Norm’s frequent absences from home were not professional in nature—he was escaping one family in order to spend time with another. The deeper Zimmerman dug into the sordid affair, the more extraordinary were his discoveries—while Norm’s other children had no idea about this duplicitous arrangement, Margaret did. The aftermath of these disclosures was thunderous—Ann divorced Norm, and what ensued was an acrimonious legal battle over finances. The author alerted Norm’s children with Margaret of the lurid predicament, news they received with alarm and disgust. Even after Norm was found out, he refused to either explain himself or apologize, an obstinacy that left an indelible imprint on Zimmerman, which he powerfully captures: “After a lifetime of lies and then screwing us out of our inheritance, this was the one thing he could’ve done—really the least he could’ve done—to give me some closure. But he simply refused. That cemented for me the fact that I did not know this man. He was an enigma. The man I thought I had known did not exist. I had been so close to him but I didn’t know him at all.”
With admirable candor, the author chronicles the profound effect Norm’s perfidy had on him—he was emotionally hobbled, unable to sustain a trusting relationship, and lost himself to a “wild and unserious life.” Zimmerman poignantly details the pain he suffered, especially the pall of suspicion his father’s mendacity cast over all of his memories: “The hardest part of processing and moving on from that are how my father’s deceptions left me with a lifetime of tainted memories. Recollections of love and joy and fondness still surface, as they would for anyone, but in my mind, they quickly turn sour. There’s this feeling that they can’t be trusted—that the feelings I recall in these moments are themselves full of untruths and contradictions.” For the most part, the author writes in a stylistically unembellished manner—his prose is cleanly straightforward, an approach that adds a certain plain radiance to the story. In the book, Zimmerman finally decides his father was a “sociopathic manipulator” but also concedes, with great philosophic restraint, that he was ultimately inscrutable, an unsolvable mystery. This is a frightening story intelligently told, one that exposes the frailty of even people’s most pedestrian certainties.
An engrossing work about the explosiveness of secrets exposed.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9798985287967
Page Count: 157
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
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
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