MixedThe Washington City Paper...an impassioned defense of \'too muchness\'...in women, blending literary analysis from the Victorian era with meditations on pop culture from the last century. But in 2020, the book feels like an anachronism, and it offers few new insights into how misogyny circumscribes women’s presentation and emotional lives ... As Vorona Cote acknowledges her debts, it forces the reader to wonder what Too Much is attempting to add to that canon in 2020. A singular focus on the Victorians would be distinguishing, but instead it covers a wide range of pop culture, touching on Britney Spears, Moonlight, Demi Lovato, and Beezus and Ramona. Because Too Much fails to decide which tonal register—academic or pop-feminist—it would like to live in, it neither works as a showcase of Vorona Cote’s scholarship or of her emotional, personal work. The unfortunate fact is that the book comes a few years too late. What would have been a sharp work in 2016 is blunted by the fact that, by now, women have been asserting their claim to unruliness for years ... true liberation means dismantling the limitations in the first place, not fetishizing transgression, which is unavailable to those who can’t afford the very real costs of breaking the rules ... Too Much works on many levels. It’s written with passion for the subject and sustained attention, full of compelling prose and observations that will surely resonate with any woman familiar with straining against the edges of the shape she’s expected to fit in. But its failure to go further means it treads old ground. It is simply not enough.
