Other than the ubiquitous canon of Jennifer Weiner, most fiction features so-called normal size protagonists. Book publishing is not much better than showbiz when it comes to representation. In a nation that is only sixty percent white, with an average women’s dress size of 12, books still often reflect the Madison Avenue ideal of beauty.Continue reading “Ms. Representation”
Tag Archives: books
Don’t Look Back
Romance is the best-selling category of books. I don’t read much in the genre, but I suspect that its appeal is in the false ideas it promotes. People don’t want to face the truth about male-female relations. It’s just too depressing. A writer like Raven Leilani forces the reader to look at certain uncomfortable truths.Continue reading “Don’t Look Back”
Gone Girl
It’s probably a sign that you liked an adaptation if you immediately read the book on which it is based. Such was the case for me with I’ll Be Gone In The Dark. Last week I watched the terrifying six-episode HBO miniseries based on Michelle McNamera’s book. I finished it with that mild longing thatContinue reading “Gone Girl”
Memory and Forgetting
Memorial Drive is the name of a thoroughfare in Atlanta. The author spent her childhood there and left for good the day her mother died. The title also alludes to the interior process of memory and forgetting that the author spends thirty years working through. Like many trauma victims, she has buried what she doesn’tContinue reading “Memory and Forgetting”
The Half List
Compiling “best of” lists is a bit tricky. I don’t know that books really should be compared to each other. Most fiction works that are traditionally published have reached a baseline of quality, either commercial or artistic, and that in itself is an accomplishment. Beyond that, it really is nothing more than a matter ofContinue reading “The Half List”
Regrets Only
If you could erase a memory from your mind, would you? And would you be the same person without it? This is one of the central questions of Adam Silvera’s More Happy Than Not. Published in 2015, this queer YA novel envisions a distant future in which a company named Leteo offers medical procedures whichContinue reading “Regrets Only”
Second Son
Freddy Trump haunts this memoir every bit as much as if his ghost occupied the second floor of his family home in Jamaica Estates, Queens. Banished to a room in his parents’ home at the end of his brief life, a transistor radio keeping him company, he is denied a final goodbye when his daughterContinue reading “Second Son”
Mother Ersatz
In 1993 Anne Lamott published Operating Instructions, about her first year as a single, sober mother. It started a publishing trend of sorts: the authentic mother memoir. At their baby’s birth, mothers were stamped with the expectation of perfection and it took real courage to admit your missteps. Lamott was successful enough that she spawnedContinue reading “Mother Ersatz”
Twister
The promise of a twist in domestic suspense is the marketing equivalent of a shirtless hunk on an erotic romance cover. If you are going to move books, you have to deliver what you are selling. Suspense fans expect the unexpected. That said, there is nothing new under the sun. I have been reading inContinue reading “Twister”
Lagos, Lagos
Armchair travel is one of the pleasures of reading. Recently I discovered two books set in Nigeria, a country I know almost nothing about. It is the seventh most populous country in the world, an oil rich nation with a GDP of $568 billion. Over half its citizens live in poverty. By coincidence, the storiesContinue reading “Lagos, Lagos”
Books Smitten 