Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Books | June 2, 2026
Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum
Almost 40 years since its disastrous Broadway run, the musical adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie is still considered the foundation of extravagant and blatantly misguided musical flops. It only ran for 16 performances before closing at a reported $8 million loss, but Carrie quickly became emblematic of a particular kind of creative folly: one where the glimmer of a good idea managed to overshadow scores of warning signs that this was a disaster in the making. That it's now a cult favourite was probably inevitable. In 1991, Ken Mandelbaum used the show as a starting point to explore the long, storied, and frequently inexplicable history of notorious Broadway musical disasters.
Failure is commonplace in art, but spectacular failures less so. Most commercial and critical disappointments are more boring than interesting. Broadway musical flops, by design, cannot help but be at least a little bit crazy. That's just how theatre kid energy works. I thought I knew my stuff on this topic but wow, Ken Mandelbaum let me know immediately that I was an amateur on the subject. I expected Not Since Carrie to cover only a handful of big flops on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Instead, he fit in dozens of examples that I would have assumed were parodies at first glance. Did you know there was a sequel to Annie? Or that there was a musical version of the play I Remember Mama that starred Liv Ullman? Or that Shōgun: The Musical happened, and it was full of lasers?!
The vast majority of these shows are lost to time, without a pro-shot or original cast recording, and sometimes even Mandelbaum seems short of primary material to borrow from. Still, he puts together a pretty comprehensive history of flop Broadway musicals leading up to the early 1990s. It paints a portrait of ego, earnestness, and the kind of bananas vanity projects we simply don't see enough of in the current entertainment ecosystem. It made me desperately want a sequel. Come on, Ken, you know you want to write about Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
She Who Remains by Rene Karabash
A sworn virgin is an old concept in certain Albanian and Kosovan cultures, wherein someone assigned female at birth can take a vow of chastity and live the rest of their lives perceived as male. Nowadays, with the advancement of women's rights and great socio-economic freedom, this practice is dying out, although it continues to fascinate us thanks to its glimpse into the contradictory nature of the gender binary. Rene Karabash, a Bulgarian writer making her debut in English with She Who Remains, was inspired by two years of research into the history of sworn virgins. One critic called it "the first serious queer novel in Bulgaria", and while I can't vouch for that, I can say that this is a striking piece of work.
High in the Accursed Mountains, in a tiny village of smothering laws, Bekja escapes an arranged marriage by choosing to become a sworn virgin. Now, living as Matija, their decision sets off a chain of revenge and bloodshed that tears apart her family for generations. As they tell the story to a visiting journalist, they are forced to confront the decisions they made and how they have been simultaneously liberating and restrictive.
The book (only 150 pages long) allows Matija to wander, bouncing from cagey towards their interviewer to painfully introspective. There are some stunning turns of phrase throughout, weaving an evocative, if deliberately misshapen, tapestry of life under the tyranny of gender. When all of your life decisions are forced into a broken binary, the end results can only ever be broken too. The stream-of-consciousness breakdown of past and present offers a bleak insight into an oft-misunderstood part of history. While some similes were a tad trite, Karabash (and translator Izidora Angel) kept a tight hold of the reins here, blending characters, timelines, and a startling amount of narrative for such a quick read.
This is Me: A Reckoning by Hayden Panettiere
When Hayden Panettiere was a teenager, she became one of the most beloved faces on primetime TV thanks to the first season of Heroes. She'd already been a familiar face on film and TV, having acted since she was 11 months old, but now, she was in a different level of fame, one accompanied by a leering eye. Being an adolescent sex object was but one of the deeply messed up things that happened to Hayden over the course of her life, and in her memoir, she opens up about her journey.
Panettiere has been out of the spotlight for a few years now as she's dealt with her health issues and an abusive relationship, and for most of her fans, this is the first time they've heard from her in a while. The press has already pored over the juiciest parts of This is Me, particularly Panettiere's revelations of being all but pimped out at parties and on yachts to creepy older men in the industry. But that barely scratches the surface of her experiences in showbusiness, on and off the screen. She opens up on family troubles, the double-edged sword of being both exploited for her sexuality and shamed for it, her relationship with Ukrainian boxer Wlad Klitschko and her difficult decision to renounce custody of their daughter as she struggled with PPD and addiction. She guides the reader through it in a straightforward, no-nonsense manner.
I couldn't help but yearn for a more distinctive voice in what is ultimately a pretty perfunctory celebrity memoir. The details are obviously heart-wrenching and Panettiere has been through a lot, but I missed the sense that there was a real personality behind the words. While reading it, I thought a lot of Christina Applegate's very good memoir, You With the Sad Eyes, which is equally as candid but driven by Applegate's sharply no-bullsh*t voice and sardonic perspective. You get a greater sense of how life has impacted her through the way she, for example, details a childhood trauma to the reader as though you were a good friend being let in on a secret. But for what it's worth, I do think This is Me is an accessible and engaging work, and a lot of people will appreciate her honesty on matters as prickly as postpartum depression and her relationship with her child. And welcome to the bisexual club, Hayden! It's good to have you on board.
