A wonderfully researched, thorough account of a forgotten but memorable life.
A biography focuses on a wealthy Australian heiress who defied the conventions of a male-dominated world.
Nell Tritton was born in 1899 into blessed circumstances—her father, Fred, was the wealthiest businessman in Australia’s Queensland—but her life was not without its travails. Two of her siblings died in 1919, victims of the flu epidemic. Undaunted nonetheless, Tritton was devoted to staking out an independent life of her own, one that freed her from the prohibitive restrictions of a more patriarchal age. She was the first woman to win prizes in Queensland for rally-driving as well as Brisbane’s first female journalist. She dreamed of moving to Paris to learn the language and become a writer, but those aspirations were stymied by the devastation of World War 1. Nevertheless, she finally arrived there in 1925, enthused to be living in a famously literary city during its halcyon days: “Nell was thrilled to think she had chosen a corner of Paris dedicated to the literati.” Tritton lived a remarkably eventful life during extraordinary times. She married Alexander Kerensky, the former Russian prime minister and an outspoken critic of Lenin and Stalin, an uncompromising position that endangered his life: “Kerensky had tried to introduce democratic reforms but had fled to Europe in fear of his life after the Russian Revolution. Lenin and his ruthless assistant Stalin had put a price on Kerensky’s head.”
De Vries’ research is magisterially scrupulous—in fact, this virtue can become a vice when she buries readers under mounds of minute details. Still, this is a comprehensive account of Tritton’s life—especially impressive since the volume is fairly short—that examines her indomitable spirit and the many ways in which she resisted societal expectations for women. Tritton’s life was as admirable as it was dramatic and cinematic, and as a result, she makes an excellent subject for a biography. De Vries vividly captures the woman’s remarkable drive and talent as well as her moral decency. When the publisher Ford Maddox Ford requested sexual favors in return for a contract, Tritton was horrified and turned him down. The author’s writing is workmanlike—always perfectly lucid but unembellished for the most part by literary style. This linguistic flatness can feel especially odd in descriptions of Tritton since she was a woman of lofty poetical ambitions. But de Vries can surprise readers—consider this moving passage that depicts the carnage German bombers left behind in France: “On the highway were dead horses and shattered limbs of bodies blown apart by bombs. The road stank of death as the sun rose and beat down on them. Many cars had been reduced to twisted wrecks and had to be pushed out of the way before the procession could start again. Nell drove past women howling beside the bodies of dead husbands and children. Dogs whose owners had been killed wandered disconsolately through the traffic.” The book is also filled with beautiful historical photographs—mostly black-and-white—that provide helpful illustrations of Tritton’s life.
A wonderfully researched, thorough account of a forgotten but memorable life.Pub Date: May 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-98-062166-2
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Pirgos Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
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