RaveThe Washington PostPhoebe Robinson’s Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes is everything, in both the \'Girl, that outfit is everything!\' sense and also in the fact that the free-flowing essay collection fits seamlessly into so many categories: earnest pandemic memoir, no-nonsense business guide, lovingly profane commentary on relationships, sex and race and unabashed celebration of Black culture, particularly Black women ... Robinson covers much ground, some light and comedic, some painfully frank, and all with the same warm intimacy ... Even the book’s occasional rambling feels relatable — 2020, as she notes, was reality-shaking and chaotic, so it’s appropriate. Robinson’s work effortlessly, reassuringly speaks into that chaos, hugging the reader while also shaking them gently, insisting they pull themselves together ... a sharp, sweet-salty pleasure ... These references, particularly those to millennial or Black culture, are made without overexplanation that would dilute their power or slow down the rhythm ... is both of the moment, with references to the exhaustion of performative allyship following the 2020 murder of George Floyd and to Netflix’s Emily in Paris, and a timeless entreaty to own one’s power, no matter what that looks like to anyone else.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
RaveThe Independent (UK)Each of its 30 short sections reads like a stream of consciousness, scribbled randomly in notebooks and on the backs of envelopes, trying to make sense of the nonsensical. With raw eloquence, Adichie’s observations have, simultaneously, an academic detachment and an inescapable anguish at being \'in the centre of this churning\' ... Though brief, Notes on Grief is, at times, a remarkably but necessarily uncomfortable read, because existing inside of that churning is inherently uncomfortable, unbearable ... Her words put a welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided ... Notes on Grief is both achingly personal and stunningly familiar to anyone who has felt that scattering. Some passages might seem redundant, but so is grief, so viciously efficient in its elasticity ... the point of Notes on Grief seems to be that loss becomes something we must live with, if we indeed want to continue living.
