A bold, uplifting testament to the tenacity of the human spirit.
A tireless outdoorsman conquers grief with a series of adventure challenges in this memoir.
Corcoran’s daring athletic odyssey doesn’t begin with his decision to swim the 500 km length of Ireland’s coastline. It began when his beloved father, Milo, suffered a stroke in 2011, inspiring the author, at 20, to run 35 marathons in 35 consecutive days around Ireland’s coast. Six years later, Corcoran, an avid motorcyclist and outdoor enthusiast, upped his game, and, in another tribute to his father—who died of cancer in 2016—the author embarked on an intrepid swimming feat: “I needed to do something,” he confesses. “I needed to move and express myself.” His memoir is fast-paced and exhilarating, vividly detailing his grueling, rigorous training schedule under the tutelage of marathon swimmer Chris Bryan, which was critical, as Corcoran had only trained as a runner before. However, Corcoran’s charity swim wasn’t corporate sponsored, and he had to manage the event’s logistics independently while concurrently training and manning a desk job to stay afloat financially. The swim itself had a bevy of obstacles, including the frigid cold and high waves of the Irish Sea, requiring months of tolerance training. Hours of rigorous pool laps were no match for braving actual seawater as “one hundred metres of icy blackness flowed beneath me.” The candid, conversational author details the heartbreak of his decision to cut short his initial swim after just 210 km when his support boat sank. The book becomes a journal of resilience when, in 2019, the author mapped out yet another challenge to complete the original venture.
This companion memoir fittingly accompanies a feature-length Irish documentary film, also titled Unsinkable, which chronicles Corcoran’s marathon and swimming challenges. The author puts into words what the film shows to be a true journey of the heart, inspired by familial love, grief, and a dedication to pushing his mind and body to their limits. His personal challenges became fundraising opportunities, amassing hefty donations for stroke and cancer charities: “it wasn’t merely swimming but doing my utmost to help others and soften disaster’s blow,” the author writes. The book is decorated with a full-colorphotographic diary by the author featuring action shots as well as images of family members and support crew; it also features line drawings and informative maps. Corcoran’s writing talents are similarly impressive—particularly his keen eye for natural details, as when he describes terrifying rip currents or being out to sea during a storm when “sharp spears of rain punctured the water like bullets.” On more personal terms, the memoir not only details the athleticism necessary to accomplish his ambitious goals, but also defines Corcoran’s endeavors as affecting, determined efforts to work through grief and to channel his anger and negativity surrounding the loss of his father into a physical challenge. Suffused with breathless athleticism, relentless resolve, and immense catharsis, this is a poignant portrayal of a man “trying to process life.” A bold, uplifting testament to the tenacity of the human spirit.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781838365028
Page Count: 303
Publisher: Tivoli Publishing House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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