RaveThe Village VoiceIn Too Much and Not the Mood’s fourteen essays, an almost compulsive use of imagery doesn’t come across as literary garnishment. The opposite is true: These descriptive details are what Chew-Bose notices first … Such details lead readers through a variety of memories: of the end of her parents’ marriage, the frenetic worship of the coming New York City summer, the freedoms and punishment of living alone, the answers that live in the pauses before we speak … Chew-Bose invites readers to reject the binaries inherent in decision making.
