A frank, self-aware, provocatively voyeuristic narrative spanning the politics of the body, inside and out.
A noted Peruvian author’s compelling assortment of essays on female sexuality, gender, and the wonders of the human body.
In her first book-length work to be translated into English, Wiener, the former editor of the Spanish version of Marie Claire, assembles a series of writings that are keenly representative of her perspectives on sexuality. She also relates anecdotes from her curious journalistic wanderings and her “unfaithful” life. Some of her tales include a fascinating profile of a boastful Peruvian sex guru and his harem of six wives, an undercover visit to a Lima prison to survey jail tattoo culture, and an intimately and vividly described evening at a Barcelona swingers’ club with her husband in tow to enjoy erotic delights from the “alchemists of sex.” Elsewhere, Wiener participates in a dominatrix demonstration and an ayahuasca ceremony, and she discusses the legacy of Chilean author Isabel Allende (“famous enough to be on a par with the likes of Stephen King, Gabriel García Márquez, and J. K. Rowling”). In a brief though engaging piece demonstrating Wiener’s dry humor, wit, and immersive sense of journalism, she investigates the myths and complexities of female ejaculation. Later, she turns her gaze inward to address the dynamics of her current polyamorous relationship with a man and a woman while wholly admitting, “I never got the knack of fidelity.” The author’s voice is passionate, authoritative, and pensive, and her tantalizing tour of the taboo and the risqué becomes an addictive pleasure as the book progresses. Her perspectives are both illuminating and educative as she instructs readers to contemplate issues such as sexuality, gender politics, and social injustice as well as how motherhood has the potential to change how a woman perceives the bigger picture. In a particularly warm, memorable story, Wiener describes how her daughter refused to sleep on her own, causing the sleep-deprived author to contort herself into a kid-sized bed.
A frank, self-aware, provocatively voyeuristic narrative spanning the politics of the body, inside and out.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63206-159-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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