An insightful biographical portrait.
An examination of the mothers behind some of history’s most recognizable authors.
In three parts, Trethewey, author of The Churchill Sisters, takes a deep dive into the lives of the women who raised Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Agatha Christie. Although all three have been written about in numerous works, this book shines a fresh light on how they were raised and how the women who raised them shaped their work. Trethewey begins with Julia Stephen, Wolff’s mother, pulling from unpublished first-person accounts and historical documents. In this section, the author focuses on themes involving how Julia’s beauty was a hindrance throughout her life; while she was a muse to many, she was ultimately unable to escape her own demons. Even though Julia lacked vanity, “Virginia believed there was a penalty for her mother’s beauty.…‘[I]t came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life—froze it.’ It made her seem aloof and untouchable.” In the section on Clara Miller, Christie’s mother, Trethewey describes how Clara displayed a wide breadth of complex emotions and rich intelligence, as well as how Clara and Agatha’s relationship was quite different from Julia and Virginia’s relationship. “They adored each other and that unconditional love was the bedrock on which Agatha built her life,” she writes. Lastly, Trethewey delves into the tumultuous relationship between Aurelia and Sylvia Plath. “Reflecting the duality of her personality,” she writes, “there was a bond between mother and daughter as intense and loving as Agatha’s with Clara, but running alongside that version, in Sylvia’s mind there was an equally powerful relationship which was full of hatred and resentment.” Although each mother endured her fair share of challenges, they raised women who went on to change the course of literature. Trethewey provides an informative portrait of the similarities and differences among each of them.
An insightful biographical portrait.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781803991894
Page Count: 368
Publisher: The History Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.
Remembering “Hershy.”
Three hundred and twenty-eight days. That’s how long Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held in captivity—tortured and starved by his captors in underground tunnels—before he was executed. He was 23 years old. In this unvarnished and heartrending account, Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel, writes of the unending torment that she and her husband, Jon, endured after learning that their son had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the attacks of October 7, 2023. Like so many other young people on that day, Hersh was attending a music festival in Israel—a celebration of love and unity. As Goldberg-Polin writes, her son was “the only American citizen kidnapped alive on October 7th who did not return alive.” In direct, plainspoken language that steers clear of politics, the author, a Jewish educator, recounts “being in a daze of the most indescribably sickening horror and fear, like nothing I had ever felt in my life. I remember my heart racing and feeling like I was in a permanent state of someone scaring me.” In addition to “shovel[ing] out my pain in the form of words,” she shares reminiscences of her son, as well as details that only a parent could notice. “His eyes were cookies,” she says of her “Hershy.” “I couldn’t find the pupils within the dark chocolate-brown irises.…He had a raspy voice, even when he was a baby.” And: “I thought he was hilarious; his sarcasm and humor were similar to mine.” Hersh and his sisters, Leebie and Orly, adapted well to life in Israel after the family moved from Richmond, Virginia. (Hersh was born in the Bay Area.) After being discharged from his service in the Israeli army as a combat medic, he was planning to journey around the world—a longtime dream of his. “So many people have come to love you, Hersh,” Jon Polin writes in the book’s afterword. And with one simple word that has the power to touch any heart, he signs off: “Dada.”
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217198009
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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