An uncensored and eccentric delight.
A British-born entertainment journalist’s account of how an unplanned pregnancy and single motherhood became the starting points for an unexpected adventure in self-acceptance.
Heawood always imagined that her future would involve “a lovely farmhouse…a dog and storybooks and trees and long invigorating walks” as well as children and a “yet-to-materialize” husband/father. Her present, however, involved singlehood, parties, quirky friends, and lively but unsteady freelance work as a Hollywood celebrity journalist, and the doctors told her that her polycystic ovary syndrome would make natural conception impossible. The next time she visited her long-term on-again, off-again long-distance musician lover, she became pregnant. Despite the lover’s misgivings about their fitness to be parents (“he said a child deserved better than us”), Heawood set a determined course for motherhood. But rather than give up her lifestyle, the author carried on along her free-spirited way. She fought through morning sickness at an interview with Jodie Foster while indiscreetly questioning the then-closeted actress about her lesbianism. Later, her “swollen breasts…and…bump” in full view, she attended the Coachella Music Festival with two young men, “one of whom she had only just met.” She gave birth in London and then settled down in a rented house in a district she loved for its “psychodrama and paranoia and spilt beer.” Floundering in the world of postpartum dating, the author desperately tried to navigate sexuality and motherhood, often with hilarious results. Still single in the end, Heawood realized that her truest love was her small daughter, with whom she formed a small but happy “republic of two.” “A single parent is both structure and playground,” she writes, “walls and soft landings, mother tropes and father tropes….I have degendered the situation and don’t see myself as a mother, but as a parent, as the adult, as the introduction to what the world can be like. As neutral as passion, as pretty as heat.” Raw and funny, Heawood’s memoir celebrates the messiness of life and motherhood with boldness, panache, and unexpected moments of real poignancy.
An uncensored and eccentric delight.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-49906-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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