A potent, heartfelt life story.
Manhattan-based librarian Conan grapples with complex mental disorders and misdiagnoses in this tumultuous memoir.
The author, who was born in 1942, writes that she grew up in Brooklyn with an elementary school teacher mother, an abusive father who worked at the post office,and a younger brother. Hers was an unhappy childhood, although she found some sense of normalcy in school and at Girl Scout camp. However, she felt a hole in her sense of self that developed into a “secret world” called “the Atmosphere”; it included an imaginary hospital with doctors that treated her illnesses, and imaginary companions such as the YellowSweaterLady and Jinx. She soon entered psychoanalysis but saw scant results until college in 1960, when she began to see a less formal analyst and began to make progress. Conan later worked as a substitute teacher and attended New York’s Pratt Institute; she also contemplated suicide, and she committed herself to a psychiatric ward for the first time in 1965. She found some peace working as a librarian at Pratt and earned a master’s degree in library science. But after further breakdowns and hospitalizations, she moved to a halfway house in the Bronx. She then met a therapist who helped identify her disorders, and another therapist who was the first who seemed to fully understand her—and upon whom she became increasingly dependent. Over the course of this lengthy memoir, Conan only minimally speaks about her feelings about her condition, which intensifies the book’s feeling of sustained detachment and unease. Instead, she conveys her state of mind to the reader through moments of eloquent narration: “If the floor had been sand, I would not have left footprints.” She also clearly shows how she was able to function in the real world, despite her overwhelming disorders, and she exhibits a sense of crystalline self-awareness throughout the text (“I felt myself slipping back into craziness”). Some readers may find this memoir to be overlong, but the exhilarating prose style effectively gets across the author’s touching and frenetic experiences.
A potent, heartfelt life story.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73467-401-9
Page Count: 450
Publisher: Greenpoint Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
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 charming and often poignant valediction from rock ’n’ roll’s Prince of Darkness.
The late heavy metal legend considers his mortality in this posthumous memoir.
“I ain’t ready to go anywhere,” writes Osbourne in the opening pages of his new memoir. “It’s good being alive. I like it. I want to be here with my family.” Given the context—Osbourne died on July 22, 2025, two weeks after the publisher announced the news of this book—it’s undeniably sad. But the rest of the text sees the Black Sabbath singer confronting the health struggles of his last years with dark humor and something approaching grace. The memoir begins in 2018; he wrote an earlier one, I Am Ozzy, in 2010. He tells of a staph infection he suffered that proved to be the start of a long, painful battle with various illnesses—soon after, he contracted a flu, which morphed into pneumonia. A spinal injury caused by a fall followed, causing him to undergo a series of surgeries and leaving him struggling with intense pain. And then there was his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, the treatment of which was complicated by his longtime struggle with alcohol and drug addiction. Osbourne peppers the chronicle of his final years with anecdotes from his past, growing up in Birmingham, England, and playing with—and then being fired from—Black Sabbath, and some of his most well-known antics (yes, he does address biting the heads off of a dove and a bat). He writes candidly and regretfully about the time he viciously attacked his wife, Sharon—the book is in many ways a love letter to her and his children. The memoir showcases Osbourne’s wit and charm; it’s rambling and disorganized, but so was he. It functions as both a farewell and a confession, and fans will likely find much to admire in this account. “Death’s been knocking at my door for the last six years, louder and louder,” he writes. “And at some point, I’m gonna have to let him in.”
A charming and often poignant valediction from rock ’n’ roll’s Prince of Darkness.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781538775417
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
