MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewAn irreverent, albeit anecdotal, dig into the claim made in incel chat rooms, on Reddit and in the so-called manosphere that it’s easier to be a woman than it is to be a straight white man today. And, guess what? She believes it ... Written in Moran’s usual confessional style — except that she’s defending the very people we’ve grown accustomed to her poking fun at ... Those hoping for a sociological dig into men and masculinity will be disappointed. Her strength is in writing what she knows, and it is impossible even for the most clever and comprehensive author to sum up an entire sex. And anyway, What About Men? isn’t meant to be comprehensive. It’s meant to be funny. But that at times, without research of any kind to support her clever observations...she runs the risk of perpetuating the very stereotypes she’s trying to unravel ... Moran seems to approach the world with irreverence. In the case of this book, readers should do the same.
Nona Willis Aronowitz
PositiveNew York Times Book ReviewShe is un-self-conscious in her descriptions, recounting length of orgasms, positions tried and the precise tools used to achieve them ... It’s a challenge to successfully chart one narrative in a book. Aronowitz attempts to weave together three, which can make the writing feel disjointed ... At the same time, this history is also critical, and fascinating, as a framework to interpret society’s views on love and sex in the present.
Imogen Crimp
MixedThe New York Times Book Review... enjoyable ... Like her protagonist, Crimp briefly studied to be a singer at a London conservatory, which may explain why passages set in this milieu are the ones where her writing — and her protagonist — find their strength ... There are plenty of stories these days about what it is to be a woman observed by the \'male gaze.\' It’s a phrase Anna and her friends would no doubt use, if the at-times heavy-handed dialogue about tampons as \'capitalist,\' or Latin as the \'language of the patriarchy,\' is any indication ... In some of these moments, A Very Nice Girl is an all-too-real reminder of what it is to be a woman in your 20s, searching for who you are, trying on identities or stuck in a complicated pseudo-relationship even when you know you shouldn’t be. It’s a book about assessing your worth through other people’s eyes — parents, friends, a lover — and about being observed: by an overprotective mother, by men on the tube, by those who assess her auditions, by classmates competing for her slot, and ultimately by the audience. And yet, for the strength of Crimp’s writing, it might have benefited from a less predictable plot. Vulnerable young woman alone in a new city, seduced by an older, richer man who turns out to be kind of a jerk … readers may be disappointed to find there’s no real twist here — unless, of course, you count that Anna must lose the guy to get herself back.
Deborah Copaken
MixedThe New York Times Book Review... uses the female anatomy as a vehicle to detail the way the author’s body has failed her, and society has objectified it, throughout the course of her life. Which might feel as retro as the title in the post-gender world we are supposedly living in, but as Copaken describes it, it is an effort to turn that old patriarchal framework on its head ... It’s a clever organizing principle. But to corral all the aspects of a life into anatomical categories can feel jolting, as Copaken veers among catastrophic ailments, the \'death spiral\' of her marriage, freelance writing, an imploding media landscape, the inadequacies of health insurance, sexual harassment, Eastern wellness, her father’s death, Black Lives Matter protests and, eventually, Covid ... There is a gratuitousness throughout, though: with anecdotes serving only to highlight the presence of semi-famous friends and an entire chapter devoted to airing past grudges against those who have diminished, in sometimes sexist ways, Copaken’s past work ... after nearly 500 pages, a reader may be left wondering what this book is meant to be. Is it an exploration of the hardships of being a woman today, a take on the medical industry that doesn’t take women’s pain seriously, or is it an overindulgent effort to prove her worth? It is all of these things, but the latter undermines the former.
Ellen Ullman
PositiveElleUllman is a rare breed, a writer and former software engineer, and she offers a vivid, gripping window into what it is to be shaped by keyboard characters and machine, in which a single wrong tap can bring entire systems crashing down ... But Life in Code isn't focused on what it is to be a female per se. Rather, it is a stream of staccatolike depictions from Ullman's 40-plus-year career. She describes turning down a job from Google's Larry Page and engaging in an e-mail relationship with a guy who could only express his feelings through the medium of code. She writes poignant passages about love, animals, and artificial intelligence. How do computers think? she wonders. To readers who may not know the lingo—abend (another word for 'crash'), Unix, COBOL—prepare for a learning curve. But there are also relatable observations: Those who can't 'do' become project managers, a common tech-world dis. Ullman relishes tech's beauty while fearing what it has created.
