Insightful close readings inform a fervent homage.
Rereading an illustrious writer.
As part of Oxford University Press’ My Reading series, award-winning novelist, poet, memoirist, and playwright Roberts offers intimate reflections about her connection to Colette (1873-1954) by considering four texts that had particular significance for her: My Mother’s House, a prismatic memoir of linked stories; Break of Day, an autobiographical novel; Chéri, Colette’s famous tale of a seductive gigolo and his aging mistress; and The Rainy Moon, a novella that Roberts first read during a particularly dark time when she was in her 30s. Raised in the “grip of Catholic morality” by a strict, undemonstrative mother, sent to a convent school that instilled a sense of “self-hatred as a woman,” the young Roberts discovered in Colette “an enticing landscape distinguished by its straightforwardly amoral celebration of sensuality.” My Mother’s House, in which Colette’s mother, Sido, “appears as a figure of powerful, overarching mythic status,” helped Roberts to rethink her relationship with her own overpowering mother and to find her way back “to that unsentimental, strong, practical French woman.” Colette showed her a new way to think about femininity as well, not as self-abnegation or inferiority to men, but “as a performance or a disguise or a fancy-dress costume.” For Colette, Roberts asserts, writing was aggressive, in keeping with her celebration of her “robust, healthy body” and voracious appetites. Besides highlighting themes of women’s independence and agency, Roberts reveals ways that Colette shaped her as a writer: teaching her, for example, that there was “a wealth of ways to use autobiographical material”; presenting prodigious examples of “supple and muscular” prose, skillfully shaped characters and dialogue, and writing replete with sensuous textures and sharply observed details.
Insightful close readings inform a fervent homage.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780192858214
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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