An indelible, loving tribute and a superb life story of struggling with disease.
In this debut memoir, a man recounts the decades spent with his cherished wife and her years battling cancer.
Gellman was only 14 years old when he first laid eyes on Barbara. It was 1964, and their Jewish families spent summers near the beach at the Rockaways in Queens. He wasn’t immediately smitten, as Barbara was two years younger, but he felt a connection by that summer’s end. The two were soon a couple, and the first obstacle to the pair’s romance was a New York City commute—he lived in Brooklyn, she in Jackson Heights, Queens. They made it work and by college age were engaged to be married. Then tragedy struck; in a sad precursor to what the couple would later endure, Barbara lost her mother to breast cancer. Gellman and Barbara tied the knot in 1971 and started their own family. Not long after their third child was born, Barbara felt a lump in her breast that turned out to be cancer. She called it “Mr. C,” which became a constant menace in the Gellmans’ lives. Barbara underwent chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and surgery, but Mr. C kept coming back until the disease spread to other parts of her body. The ever supportive Gellman loved making his wife laugh with sometimes off-color jokes; Barbara’s favorite name for him was Silly. She kept her sense of humor as well as her strength through countless rounds of treatments but finally lost her 30-year fight in 2011. The book’s later chapters describe how the family managed to persevere after Barbara’s death.
Gellman structures his engrossing memoir after shiva, the Jewish seven-day period of mourning. He divides the book into eight parts, representing each day of shiva and the post-mourning phase, when he hoped to work through his grief with stories of Barbara. He writes openly about what the couple went through, from painful diagnoses and treatments to close friends who essentially ignored Barbara during her late-’90s chemotherapy for metastatic breast cancer. But it’s not all gloom, as Gellman revels in happier memories of the woman he adored—fondly reminiscing about her wit and refreshing frankness. The author, for example, insisted he wouldn’t be able to carry newlywed Barbara through their apartment’s front door. “You better start working out,” she said. “Because that’s what you’re going to do.” Meanwhile, his “silliness,” rather than pervading the narrative, generally surfaces in things he would utter to Barbara, which don’t often rise above sex and fart jokes. Still, Gellman’s humor is indicative of the couple’s perpetual optimism, an infectious attitude destined to inspire others facing similar challenges. The mostly linear autobiographical tale follows the couple’s life from their first house in New Jersey to their apartment in South Florida. Though the vibrant story understandably centers on Barbara, Gellman could have placed the spotlight more on himself. He periodically notes his lifelong OCD without fully expressing its impact on his life. The author rounds out his book with copious photographs of the couple, correspondence (including people’s affectionate thoughts about Barbara), and, best of all, snippets from his wife’s journal from a trip to Italy, filled with vivid, family-centric writings.
An indelible, loving tribute and a superb life story of struggling with disease.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73752-230-0
Page Count: 570
Publisher: Mglifeworks LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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