Epilogue: A Memoir
By Anne Roiphe
Harper, 214 pages, $24.95
Reading the opening lines of Epilogue, Anne Roiphe’s memoir about the death of her husband, I felt the same exasperation that I experienced upon learning, also via memoir, that Katha Pollitt can’t drive a car. Ms. Roiphe, apparently, doesn’t know how to open the Read More
THE TEN-YEAR NAP
By Meg Wolitzer
Riverhead, 351 pages, $24.95
I loved Meg Wolitzer’s previous novels The Wife (2003) and The Position (2005), but when I told a friend that her new book, The Ten-Year Nap, was about stay-at-home mothers who lamented their old selves, and my friend said, “Disenchanted mommies—it’s so cliché to Read More
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida. Ecco, 226 pages, $23.95.
The impulse to lump these two novels together is understandable, since Heidi Julavits and Vendela Vida are co-founders of The Believer (a literary journal I’ve written for—just once.) But there’s actually very little evidence to support the notion of a Read More
As Newsweek recently reminded us, sibling dynamics are as important (psychologically, developmentally, etc.) as anything that goes on between a parent and child. The internecine struggle between brothers and sisters—who does best in school, who calls shotgun in the car, who gets the first waffle out of the waffle iron—it’s Darwinism at the breakfast table, Read More
As Newsweek recently reminded us, sibling dynamics are as important (psychologically, developmentally, etc.) as anything that goes on between a parent and child. The internecine struggle between brothers and sisters—who does best in school, who calls shotgun in the car, who gets the first waffle out of the waffle iron—it’s Darwinism at the breakfast table, Read More
The Wonder Spot, by Melissa Bank. Viking, 324 pages, $24.95.
Back in 1999, Melissa Bank’s first book, The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, filled entire windows of Barnes & Noble with its rear-view image of a young woman in galoshes. Since then, Ms. Banks has been blamed-unfairly-for helping to launch “chick lit,” the Read More
Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, by Judith Warner. Riverhead Books, 327 pages, $23.95.
When I first read Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, a week after giving birth to my first child, it registered as little more than a theoretical exercise. Being a parent was an intensely physical Read More
Citizen Girl, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. Atria, 306 pages, $24.95.
Having sold 1.4 million copies of The Nanny Diaries, you’d think Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus wouldn’t need to resort to the infantilizing gimmick of using the word “girl” in the title of their second novel. ( Girls’ Poker Night, Dirty Girls Read More
