This Sunday, Rachel Donadio continued her regrettable declivity into the morass of embarrassing personal essays — the kind of writing once penned by Curtis Sittenfeld, before Sittenfeld wised up and stopped writing for the New York Times Book Review for good.
But this has not prevented literary experts from asking why Donadio, who is in her mid-thirties and really should know better, would bang out such remarkably judgmental tripe. (Sittenfeld was 31 when she wrote her essays.)
There is a sad but certain answer. Hard-pressed to answer this question, this hastily formed literary committee decided to take some initiative. They knocked on the door of Ms. Donadio’s apartment and discovered a woman — half-Sittenfeld, half-Donadio — who expressed a half-hearted desire to move to downtown Philadelphia. This committee reports that Curthel Sittenadio was looking around for two partially completed manuscripts: one named Ep, the other named The Man Of. The hope was to put these two books together and finally break out of the New York Times doldrums with a published novel that would sell.
But what happened was a merging of personalities that may prove to be inexorable. Scientists have been commissioned to bring the old Rachel Donadio back — the one who once worked at the New York Observer and who was, every so often, fun. But the physical and writing transmogrification may be permanent.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
You are so effing with us!