Review by Booklist Review
Addonizio (Lucifer at the Starlite, 2011) is brash and tender, pissed off and funny, well armored and wounded. Emotions, bravado, and empathy run high in her award-garnering poetry and novels, and she now taps into the wellsprings of her creativity in this rollicking and wrenching memoir-in-essays. Her confessions involve sex and the conundrums of female desire rising and falling beneath the withering disdain of misogynist social arbiters, as well as the demoralizing particulars of the often-romanticized writing life, from loneliness and doubt to financial deprivation, writer's block, and barbed judgments, including the source of the book's irresistible title. The most moving tales involve her poetry-loving sportswriter father and her mother, a celebrity tennis player who had a fling with Spencer Tracy, then lost her prowess to Parkinson's. Addonizio also incisively considers the terror and suffering of her oldest brother, her bouts with drinking, failed marriages, online dating, and, a bright spot, motherhood. Always vital, clever, and seductive, Addonizio, a secular Anne Lamott, a spiritual aunt to Lena Dunham, delivers shock and awe, humor and pathos with panache.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Addonizio, already known as an accomplished poet (Lucifer at the Starlite) and fiction writer (The Palace of Illusions), shows a knack for memoir as well in this essay collection. Organized according to no particular chronology, the pieces serve as windows into the life of a successful mid-career poet: the underpaid writing panels, boozy conferences, and daily struggle to actually get words down on page. Her writing is charmingly self-aware, at times confessional (a descriptor she likens to being tarred and feathered), but never apologetic. She wears her sexual misadventures, her drinking habits, and her anxieties over abandonment and failure like a badge, if not of honor, then of identity. The daughter of tennis champion Pauline Betz, she writes stunningly about watching her mother's battle with Parkinson's disease, as well as about her own experience as a mother, to the actress Aya Cash. In the collection's eponymous essay, Addonizio recalls learning that a critic had called her "Bukowski in a sundress," prompting a thoughtful critique of sexism that concludes with her suggestion that this icon of literary machismo might one day be known as "Kim Addonizio in pee-stained pants." This is Addonizio in a nutshell: funny, frank, vulgar, and just a little bit vulnerable. Agent: Rob McQuilkin, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A sometimes-scandalous poet opens up about herself and her business. Mary Karr describes writing a memoir as "knocking yourself out with your own fist." In these short, autobiographical pieces, poet and novelist Addonizio (The Palace of Illusions: Stories, 2014, etc.) knocks herself out over and over, sometimes viciously. The book is filled with her usual jaunty wit, sarcasm, and irreverence. This "Emily Dickinson with a strap-on," as she calls herself, is ruthlessly honest and writes so well that no matter what she's excoriating or dissing or musing about becomes immediately fascinating. Her passion for writing is an "irresistible lover" she's known most of her life; it's the "monster that controls me." There are also the lovers she has sought in all the wrong places her whole lifethe divorces and many lovers or mere sex partners for a night. Too many had "no heart in their chest cavity." Many of these pieces are dark and unrelenting in self-flagellation. There's the drinking (a lot), depression, and a drug-riddled life: "pot, mescaline, acid, Quaaludes, Seconals, coke, heroin, speed," and others she can't recall. Addonizio writes fondly of her famous parents. Her sportswriter dad read to her often, and her piece about taking her elderly, ailing, once-a-champion-tennis-player mom, Pauline Betz, to a drug store for a flu shot is tender and loving. Poetry and writing and her daughter, Aya Cash, an accomplished actress, are the true loves in her life. Addonizio has managed to live off her books, grants, prizes, and readings her whole life. Trying to write a third novel to make some money was as painful as "having a baby," and she gives up. Whether it's walking around drunk at a poetry conference or looking for a new beau online, the life of this poet is not a pretty picture, but it's captivating. An unrelenting, authentic, literary midnight confession. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
