If you want to know what it's like to live a life in-transit --- to dress yourself out of a suitcase, shower in truck stops, and sleep in airport terminals --- My Life on the Road is not the book you're looking for. Gloria Steinem's memoir is a reflection on jet-setting and wandering, but it's … Continue reading My Life on the Road: A Review
Despite frequent warnings from English professors to never conflate the author with the narrator, the situations in which readers may actually make that mistake seldom seem to crop up. But beware Louise Wareham Leonard's 52 Men. It's all too easy to mistake author Louise for narrator Elise, and vice versa. In its opening, 52 Men … Continue reading 52 Men: A Review
Whenever younger writers ask me for the best books on the craft, I always recommend The Elements of Style. Yes, it's stodgy and impractical at times, but it gives new writers a great, rules-based foundation on which to build their careers. Arthur Plotnik's Spunk & Bite demolishes that building to construct something bigger and better. … Continue reading Spunk & Bite: A Review
Born holding hands, Giselle and Isabelle Boyer have the kind of twinship you hear about in weird news. They feel each other's pain, and can practically read each other's minds. But in Edwidge Danticat's Untwine, the girls' sisterhood takes a turn for the worst when Giselle experiences something Isabelle never will: the feeling of her … Continue reading Untwine: A Review
After writing a letter home from college to reveal her lesbian identity to her parents, Alison Bechdel receives a somewhat distressing phone call from her mother, who lets loose an even bigger family secret: Alison's father is a closeted gay man who kept younger men --- often his children's babysitters --- as lovers. A few … Continue reading Fun Home: A Review