A passionate but uneven memoir of a fractured childhood.
Eichenblatt’s memoir recounts the author’s experiences as both a son and a father.
In his nonfiction debut, the author, a lawyer, tells the story of his childhood, which was full of abandonment and betrayal, and his experience parenting his own five children. “We all collect certain landmark moments in our memory’s personal trophy case,” he writes. “These signal moments, both great and terrible, are the ones we can’t shake.” Framed by chapters set in the present, in which Eichenblatt talks with his children or his therapist, the narrative expands to encompass some of those landmark moments in his personal story. While in session with his therapist, for instance, he recalls Richard, the angry, insulting man who married the author’s mother and added the quiet, shy teenage Eichenblatt to his own family in the 1970s after the author’s biological father disappeared and Richard moved them all to Florida. As his therapist gently prodded him, Eichenblatt gradually remembered knocking Richard down, beating him, and choking him until one of his stepbrothers pulled him away (his therapist asked, “Would you have killed him?”). He recalls flunking out of Florida State and living on a kibbutz in Israel in his 20s (“driving a tractor, picking fruit, pulling weeds, working six days a week, gave me time to think”); being fired from a menial job on his birthday and wanting to fight the boss who fired him; the time his school caught fire and all the students had to be bussed back home; and his love for his rescue beagle, Sam. These and other memories are illustrated with black-and-white photos throughout.
Eichenblatt’s storytelling voice is characterized by an oddly effective combination of urgency and morbid humor; he narrates his story almost entirely in the present tense, and his voice keeps the pages turning. This is not a stiff or dispassionate memoir—quite the opposite. The author mentions that his friends tell him his stories from his crazy childhood make him interesting, but they, he points out, didn’t have to live through it. Eichenblatt vividly conveys the drug-addled aimlessness of his boyhood, fueled by the feelings of anger and betrayal that permeate almost all of the narrative. The dark themes of abandonment and pent-up rage are well-realized, though their power is undercut by the author’s penchant for including the kinds of irrelevant trivialities that so often lumber personal memoirs. “I like the Filet-O-Fish but ask if they can make it without onions and tartar sauce,” he writes in a passage that will interest no one on Earth except himself. “Grandma Annie loves to watch us eat and is always cooking something, usually pot roast with carrots and potatoes,” reads another, and the book has far too many such meandering digressions; they blunt the personal elements that are the book’s driving force. There are heartwarming family moments in which the author finds love and bonding despite all the negativity in his background, and these are rewarding and well-orchestrated. Readers who can stomach the Filet-O-Fish moments will find a genuinely touching tale of fragile hope.
A passionate but uneven memoir of a fractured childhood.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781960865281
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Christmas Lake Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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