An empowering and informative read for women of all ages.
Mason describes the “evolutionary lineage” of life as a woman in this nonfiction work.
Aiming to expand on the old chestnut identifying a woman’s developmental stages as “maiden, matron, and crone,” the author conceptualizes the lifespans of women across nine stages: Foundation, Awakening, Sovereignty, Matrescence, Segue, Metamorphosis, The Free Period, The Glide, and The Resolution. For each stage, she describes typical features, outlines some science and research, and discusses how to empathize with someone living through it. Mason also includes excerpts from interviews, some of which were conducted on her podcast, The Rose Woman Podcast. Each chapter concludes with a list of “Key Takeaways” summarizing the main points of the stage in question. While the author presents ample scientific support for these developmental stages, her spiritual and social considerations are equally thorough and convincing. “Sovereignty” and “Matrescence” are the longest chapters, containing extensive discussions of sexuality along with feminist analyses of womanhood in society. Some of the most edifying arguments in the text are found in these chapters—one such concept is journalist Nicolle Hodges’ idea of a “sexual debut,” which typically occurs in Stage 3, Sovereignty. Mason describes the sexual debut as an alternative to the “loss” of virginity, “a celebration of stepping into your sexual self, in whatever way feels right for you. Not something you lose, but something you claim.” While the author expresses her hope that the book can be “for every woman—across age, background, and life experience—who is curious about the diverse stages of female development,” she acknowledges that her lens is that of “a woman in a particular cultural, racial, and socioeconomic context, and the perspectives of those I interviewed.” Throughout the book, Mason includes space for differences, emphasizing that the stages are descriptive, not prescriptive. (Only when discussing breast implants, which she views as “insanity,” does her validation of alternate perspectives wane slightly.) The book provides a powerful new way to look at the lifecycles of women that feels inclusive and affirming.
An empowering and informative read for women of all ages.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798218643775
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Moonglow Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.
The comic and television personality turns serious—semi-serious, anyway—in a combination memoir and self-help book.
Handler opens these generally short essays with a memory of childhood that closes with the exhortation to keep the child within us alive into adulthood: “Hold on to that child tightly, as if she were your own, because she is.” The memory soon veers into the comically absurd, with an account of a cocaine-fueled cross-country trip with a random companion who looked like another TV personality: “I don’t know if Dog the Bounty Hunter does copious amounts of cocaine, but he sure looks like he does.” Drugs and juice are seldom far from the proceedings, but therapy is close by, too, and clearly the latter has been of tremendous use, if “exhausting in the sense that every new development or idea led to a period of intense self-awareness followed by waves of acute self-consciousness coupled with endless self-recrimination.” As the anecdotes progress, that intense self-awareness becomes less fraught. Some of her life lessons are drawn from her experiences wrestling with the yips and setbacks of performing before audiences; some turn into knowing one-liners (“I knew if three men in a row told me not to do something, it was imperative that I do the opposite”). Most, even if tongue-in-cheek or rueful, are delivered with a disarming friendliness laced with her trademark archness: Her account of a dinner opposite Woody Allen and daughter/wife Soon-Yi is worth the price of admission alone. In the main, Handler is a cheerleader for everyone worthy of cheers, and especially women. As she writes, encouragingly, “You have misbehaved, and then corrected, and then misbehaved again, and then corrected some more”—and have grown and flourished.
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593596579
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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