This Will All Be Over Soon

March 1, 2021

Dragged down by cancer, kidney failure, and recurring pneumonia, Pulitzer Prize winner Bragg had his heart lifted by The Speckled Beauty--a rambunctious stray dog who also needed love. In Seeing Ghosts, a study of grief and family, journalist Chow opens with emigration from China and Hong Kong to Cuba and America and moves to her mother's death from cancer (75,000-copy first printing). From award-winning news producer and photojournalist Copaken, author of the New York Times best-selling Shutterbabe, Ladyparts contextualizes soured marriage, solo parenting, and dating while ill with the substandard treatment of women by U.S. health care. In I Left My Homework in the Hamptons, Grossberg reveals exactly what it's like to tutor the children of New York's wealthiest families (50,000-copy first printing). Author of the New York Times best-booked Ten Thousand Saints, Henderson explores a long-term marriage that has survived her husband's struggles with physical and mental illness in Everything I Have Is Yours (75,000-copy first printing). Ranging from 38 Grand Slam titles to embracing her sexual identity at age 51, King details a life lived spectacularly in All In. In Honor Bound, McGrath recounts serving as the first woman to fly a combat mission for the Marine Corps and efforts to unseat Mitch McConnell as Kentucky senator. Winner of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, Yangon, Myanmar-born, Bangkok- and San Jos�-raised Myint's Names for Light probes silence, absence, and death over three generations of her family, defined by postcolonial struggle. In Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be, a Roxane Gay Audacious Bookclub November Pick, Perkins plumbs racism, wealth, poverty, beauty, and more from the perspective of a Southern Black woman. Qu's Made in China captures the challenges of an immigrant childhood, which included a mother so brutally demanding that Qu finally complained to New York's Office of Children and Family Services. In This Will All Be Over Soon, Saturday Night Live cast member Strong addresses grief over a close cousin's death from glioblastoma in the midst of the pandemic (75,000-copy first printing)..

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 24, 2021
Saturday Night Live cast member Strong shows her serious side in this uneven if earnest memoir about the death of her cousin. Covering a year in diary-style entries, she begins in March 2020, two months after her cousin Owen died at age 30 of brain cancer. With SNL on hiatus due to the pandemic—and a new romance with someone who’d contracted Covid-19 on hold—she had time to reflect on her friendship with the funny, bird-obsessed Owen. Strong shares Owen’s text messages and glimpses of him facing cancer with courage and humor (“You know how everybody goes... on WebMD and panics and convinces themselves they have brain cancer? Well I’m the one who actually had brain cancer”), but he remains somewhat remote. Strong’s writing is more vivid when she explores her own life, notably her 1990s childhood with her troubled but bighearted brother (“I bit him hard once in the armpit”) and the high school expulsion that led her to find her “people” at the Chicago Academy for the Arts. While fans may be left wanting more of Strong’s personal story, her sincere tribute is nonetheless touching. Agents: Cindy Uh and Cait Hoyt, CAA.

July 1, 2021
Saturday Night Live cast member Strong shares her grief in the wake of her cousin's death, both to liberate herself from the pain and to memorialize him. The book is essentially the author's journal from March 2020 ("I don't know how to tell this story. I don't quite know what the story is. Because I don't know when it starts. Or how it ends") to March 2021: "I don't know what I've learned or what I know....Here's a thing I know for sure: I had a cousin named Owen who had red hair as a little boy and he was a serious kid and he loved birds. He taught me about love during his life and he's teaching me about love after." Strong chronicles the months following Owen's death from brain cancer at age 30 and provides glimpses of life during the pandemic. Her prose is sincere yet largely flavorless. Without establishing a narrative arc, the author offers little in the way of revelation, for herself or readers, delivering a collection of non sequiturs, text messages, banal confessions, and scattershot notes typed on her phone. Fans hoping for details about her experiences at SNL will be disappointed--and also surprised by the lack of humor. The author repeatedly describes herself and this work as messy, which is an apt assessment. "I seem to just keep talking (or writing in this case) and hoping someone gets a sense of me that way," she writes. In recalling a failed romance, Strong is vague and circumspect: "I accepted a lot. I'm not proud. But I think the secrecy and shame is part of why you get stuck in really bad places. In an abusive relationship. So here are empty pages." There follow 12 blank pages. Her affection for Owen, however, clearly comes through. There's no lack of emotion in Strong's voice, but the delivery mostly falls flat.

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September 24, 2021

Strong, a Saturday Night Live cast member known for spot-on impersonations of everyone from Melania Trump to Jeanine Pirro, delivers a raw, heartfelt account of her worst year. In mid-2020, after quarantining for two weeks in New York City at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Strong fled to an isolated house in the woods with two trusted friends. She describes grieving the recent loss of her beloved cousin from brain cancer, struggling to maintain a long-distance relationship with a man who contracted COVID-19 and seemed conflicted about her, and turning to writing as therapy. Facing her fear of the virus and the overwhelming sadness of losing loved ones was immensely difficult, Strong writes, but she attempted to find reasons to laugh and ways to connect with family and friends from a distance. Her reflections on past relationships, coupled with anecdotes about breaking into show business, make Strong's book relatable and provide a little comic relief to a deeply personal, heartbreaking story. VERDICT Readers need not be familiar with Strong's work to appreciate her story, as it reflects the grief that so many have recently experienced. A reassuring, inspiring memoir that will resonate with readers who, like Strong, are trying to make sense of the last year and a half.--Lisa Henry, Kirkwood P.L., MO

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.