For most young girls, being seventeen and pregnant is not a good place to be. For Esther Hicks it’s even worse because she is the youngest daughter of a fundamentalist pastor and part of a reality TV show about their family. With a life played out in front of the camera and the nation, how can this be anything but catastrophic for Essie, and more importantly, for the show's ... Read More...
Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture
I feel like a broken record for all the times since 2017 that I’ve said, “Important reading. Timely reading. Everyone should read.”, but here I am again. Not That Bad, with its essays from women around the world, talking about their experiences of rape, harassment, intimidation, and violence is the kind of reading that goes beyond tears. In Roxanne Gay’s foreword we learn that ... Read More...
The Stranger in the Woods
In case this news slipped by you, as it did me: In 2013 a man was apprehended at a children’s summer camp in northern Maine stealing food and supplies. Not particularly interesting except that when asked by the police he can tell them his birth date, but not how old he is—he has no idea what year it is. Further questioning reveals he has no address, no vehicle, no mail, none of ... Read More...
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
There isn’t any status in it unless you’d be impressed to know that the Mars Room is not a middling or mediocre strip club but is definitely the worst and most notorious, the very seediest and most circuslike place there is. In stark contrast to all that was warm and lovely in Monday’s book, Tin Man, I’m back today with a book that probably worked because it was ... Read More...
The Map of Salt and Stars
Making maps is the fulcrum for Jennifer Joukhadar’s debut novel, The Map of Salt and Stars. Rawiya and Nour are young women who tell their stories side by side even though they are separated by almost a thousand years. Rawiya is a sixteen-year-old in ancient Ceuta who longs to see the world beyond her village so she leaves home in the guise of a young man and becomes an ... Read More...
Heart Berries: A Memoir
It’s hard, as a reviewer, to say you loved a book or felt deeply touched by it, but that you’re not sure you understood a lot of it. And by understand, I mean, literally, the facts. This is the case for me regarding Terese Mailhot’s memoir, Heart Berries. The emotion of it gripped me. The symbolism of her words is a cold, clear stream—shocking and cleansing. For much of the ... Read More...
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