Jong-Fast is the Joan Rivers for slackers: she delights in pushing the boundaries of libel only to retreat, all in the...
From the author of the debut novel Normal Girl (2000): shallow, neurotic, very funny essays that continue to milk the writer’s relations to famous mother Erica Jong and grandfather Howard Fast.
“I knew I was going to have to prostitute this experience,” Jong-Fast acknowledges by way of mock apology for dishing the dirt on the famous people she encounters during her years of growing up, “and pretty much everything else that’s ever happened to me.” Straightaway, she dispenses with niceties: she loves lying, is “mildly maladjusted,” greedy for publicity, “somewhat self-obsessed,” and shamelessly devoted to name-dropping, especially dropping her own family’s names if that can win her food or flattery. When she first meets the new girl and future supermodel Sophie Dahl at the tony Manhattan Day School, her opening line is “Do you know who my mom is?” Some of the sacred cows Jong-Fast relishes butchering include her grandfather Howie (a novelist jailed in the ’50s for refusing to name names before HUAC; now, in his eighties, he’s marrying his forty-year-old secretary—“The bride wore a white suit. The groom wore Depends”); the various unsavory boyfriends of her mother, the so-called Queen of Erotica; the shrinks her mother employed to help the husky Molly slim down; and family friend Joan Collins, who commits the horrific faux pas of announcing that thirteen-year-old Molly was “too fat to go on Valentino’s yacht,” thus ensuring ten more years of therapy. Jong-Fast is sarcastic but not stupid, and she wields an acid pen—the “muumuu-wearing fascist” psychiatrist to the stars who helps her lose weight is dubbed “Adolf Hitler,” and one in the succession of dubious secretaries for her mom at their home on East 94th Street is “Marie Osmond,” for her “incredible value system.”
Jong-Fast is the Joan Rivers for slackers: she delights in pushing the boundaries of libel only to retreat, all in the spirit of good clean fun. After all, what else does she have to write about?Pub Date: April 12, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6144-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Aunty Entity and the lady who showed Mick Jagger his best moves will delight in Turner’s lightly spun memoir.
Rock-’n’-soul icon Turner is happy at last, and she wants the world to know it.
The love story of the title is specific: The 78-year-old singer has been with her German mate for 33 years, and though bits and pieces of her body have been failing and misbehaving—she recounts a stroke, kidney failure, cancer, and other maladies—her love is going strong. It’s also generalized: Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, is enchanted by the world, from her childhood countryside to the shores of Lake Zurich, where she has lived nearly half her life. There was another love story, of course, the one that fans will know and lament: her marriage to the drug-addicted, philandering Ike Turner, of whom she writes, pointedly, “at this point in my life, I’ve spent far more time without Ike than with him.” The author emerges from these pages as self-aware and hungry for knowledge and experience. Who knew that she was a dedicated reader of Dante as well as a “favorite aunt” of Keith Richards and a practitioner of Buddhism of such long standing that Ike himself demanded that she lose her shrine? The gossip is light, though she’s clear on the many reasons she broke away from Ike. She’s also forgiving, and as for others in her circle over the years, she calls Mel Gibson “Melvin” because of his “little boy quality,” though she doesn’t approve of certain bad behavior of his. Mostly, her portraits of such figures as David Bowie and Bryan Adams are affectionate, and the secrets she reveals aren’t terribly shocking. Those fishnet stockings and short skirts, she lets slip, were more practical than prurient, the stockings running less easily than nylons and the short skirts “easier for dancing because they left my legs free."
Fans of Aunty Entity and the lady who showed Mick Jagger his best moves will delight in Turner’s lightly spun memoir.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9824-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2018
Honest, of course, but also surprisingly approachable and engaging.
W. has his say.
In a page-turner structured around important decisions in his life and presidency, Bush surprises with a lucid, heartfelt look back. Despite expected defenses of past decisions, Bush is candid and unafraid to say when he thinks he was wrong. Critics on both the left and right are challenged to walk in his shoes, and may come away with a new view of the former president—or at least an appreciation of the hard and often ambiguous choices he was forced to make. Aside from the opening chapter about his decision to quit drinking, the book is not chronologically ordered. Bush mixes topics as needed to tell a larger story than a simple history of his administration. Certain themes dominate the narrative: the all-encompassing importance of 9/11 to the bulk of his presidency, and how it shaped and shadowed almost everything he did; the importance of his faith, which is echoed in every chapter and which comes through in an unassuming manner; the often unseen advisor whom the president conferred with and confided in on almost every subject—his wife, Laura Bush; and the wide array of people who helped him rise to the White House and then often hindered him once he was there. The book is worthwhile for many reasons. Even if many readers may not agree with his views on the subjects, Bush’s memories of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and other major events are riveting and of historical value on their own. Additionally, Bush provides insight into the daily life of the president. The author accepts blame for a number of mistakes and misjudgments, while also standing up for decisions he felt were right.
Honest, of course, but also surprisingly approachable and engaging.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-59061-9
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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