Ebullience and grief mark a touching memoir.
A memorial to a cherished wife.
After emigrating from Swaziland to London in 1982, actor Grant met dialect coach Joan Washington and fell in love; in 1986, they married. A diary-keeper since childhood, the author draws on his candid entries to weave together an absorbing, moving chronicle of his deeply happy and long marriage; the miscarriages and premature birth of a daughter, who died the same day, and their joy when at last a successful pregnancy resulted in the birth of their beloved Olivia; the many highs of his acting career, including a Golden Globe Award and Oscar nomination; and the grueling 10 months between Joan’s learning that she had stage 4 lung cancer and her death in September 2021. “If this illness has begun to teach us anything,” Grant observed soon after the diagnosis, “it’s that living in the moment, for the moment, is the most positive way forward.” But that resolve was sorely tested as Joan’s condition worsened and he and Olivia needed to attend to Joan’s every need. An experimental drug gave them hope—until it failed. By August, he writes, “our night and day and night has tilted into a canyon of unease, doubt, and acute anxiety.” Friends helped: Nigella Lawson sent delectable food; Camilla Bowles and Prince Charles each sent a note early on, and later Charles stopped by for an unexpected visit. Since both Grant and his wife had long careers in theater and movies, they were close to many members of the acting elite: Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson brought ice cream and sorbet; Ralph Fiennes sent a long, affectionate letter; Emma Thompson came for tea with her adopted son, Tindy; Gabriel Byrne sat at Joan’s bedside, “plate-spinning philosophicals, anecdotage, and ruminations.” In an appendix, Grant compiles tributes to Joan from a roster of notables, including Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Fiona Shaw, and Emily Mortimer.
Ebullience and grief mark a touching memoir.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781668030691
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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