A close look at a tumultuous life.
The intimate revelations of a sensuous, ambitious writer.
Out of nearly 5,000 pages from the notebooks and diaries of Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995), editor von Planta and her team have culled about 20% to represent the author’s formative years as a writer. They begin with her first diary entry in 1941, when she was an undergraduate at Barnard, and conclude in 1950, with the publication of her first novel, Strangers on a Train, and the completion of her second, The Price of Salt. As this volume demonstrates, Highsmith poured everything into her private notebooks: desires, dreams, inspirations, frustrations, and more. Longing for “the unspeakably blissful sensation of being loved,” she recounts a flood of infatuations, affairs, seductions, and betrayals. “We seek forever,” she writes, “one other human heart we can touch and who can touch ours.” Aside from a chronicle of sex with many women (and a few men, one of whom became her fiance), Highsmith records her efforts to be recognized as a writer. After graduating from college in 1942, she failed to get a job at a glossy magazine—the New Yorker or Harper’s Bazaar, for example. Short-term gigs ended when she found a job as a researcher and scriptwriter for a monthly comic magazine, which supported her for several years and gave her time to work on her fiction. “I am writing like K. Boyle,” she exulted, “with many adjectives, many strong sensuous words that one feels in the body.” In 1943, she sold her first story, and the next year she took her first trip abroad, to Mexico. Her love life in New York’s queer community was energetic and fueled by alcohol. Often, she dated several women concurrently, a practice that didn’t end well, and she was drawn to successful older women. As in a previous collection, this one contains a foreword by Highsmith’s biographer Joan Schenkar and succinct introductions for each year.
A close look at a tumultuous life.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781324092940
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
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
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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