PositiveThe Wall Street JournalGarten not only reveals the challenges she has faced along the way, but makes surprising disclosures about her childhood and her marriage to Jeffrey Garten ... Fireside chatty and conversational in tone. She tells her story well in easily digested prose, although she veers into self-help from time to time.
Sylvia Brownrigg
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMs. Brownrigg hasn’t restricted herself to writing a straight memoir, or even a straight work of fiction. To tell her story she has audaciously incorporated elements of both, using imagined scenes as a way to reveal emotional truths. But throughout she’s prone to off-the-point, exhausting digressions that give the reader a bit too much to wade through.
Carol Kino
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalCarol Kino has interwoven a biography of the McLaughlins with an authoritative, detailed history of fashion, the art world and photography in midcentury New York ... Ms. Kino doesn’t delve very deeply into the McLaughlins’ psychology.
Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
RaveThe Wall Street JournalA lively, well-written and satisfyingly detailed account of the family that came to own New York ... Provides a fascinating history of the city.
Janet Wallach
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalWallach presents a compelling story that pulsates with the energy of a thriller ... Despite the occasional cliché and at times cloying prose...Ms. Wallach tells a good story.
Michael Finkel
RaveThe Wall Street JournalA mesmerizing true-crime psychological thriller ... The final outcome is a shock. Mr. Finkel tells an enthralling story. From start to finish, this book is hard to put down.
Alice Robb
RaveThe Wall Street JournalAn enlightening, perceptive and, ultimately, sad book. Ms. Robb evokes the romance of ballet while revealing its dark side and asks tough questions that have no clear answers.
Mac Griswold
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... meticulously researched and engaging ... Like an expert tour guide Ms. Griswold takes you around the Mellons’ \'self-sufficient universe [where] acquiring the best became expected, ingrained,\' commenting with scholarly detail on the gardens and the décor of the houses ... This is a lot of information about a talented woman whose personality isn’t that sympathetic. But Ms. Griswold notes that what saved Bunny \'from being a complacent, undereducated, rich society woman with time on her hands was her bottomless curiosity.\' She was a gifted horticulturalist, and this book is certain to inspire gardeners, even if they don’t have Mellon millions to spend on topiary.
Natalie Livingstone
RaveThe Wall Street JournalReads like an epic novel ... In this impressively researched and beautifully written book, Ms. Livingstone has done a remarkable job of illuminating the women behind the Rothschild name.
Sarah Horowitz
MixedWall Street JournalPlenty of salacious tidbits make The Red Widow fun to read, but Ms. Horowitz...delivers more than a lurid tale of murder. She examines the moral attitude of a society in which women like Steinheil had little independence and were forced to rely on men for their survival ... Ms. Horowitz’s book is well researched, but her portrait of Steinheil doesn’t go very deep, and her descriptions of Belle Époque Paris and its salons are surprisingly flat. For a better picture, look to Steinheil’s own lively, unreliable memoir.
Damien Lewis
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMr. Lewis is a prolific author of wartime histories and novels. Agent Josephine is not a biography (there have been many) but a lengthy account of the war and her espionage work, interspersed with background material on her life ... a fascinating story, thoroughly researched and richly detailed. It’s written in the breathless style of a thriller, with a firm eye on a miniseries and an overdose of clichés ... Mr. Lewis writes evocatively about the supporting cast, all of whom could have come out of novels by Graham Greene or Ian Fleming.
Joanna Scutts
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... [a] meticulously researched and complex social history ... Those not well-versed in feminist history might find quite a few of the names in this book obscure. They come in such rapid succession that at times it’s hard to keep the scenes in focus.
Tilar J Mazzeo
RaveThe Wall Street JournalMs. Mazzeo has written a compelling story, a tangled web of deceit, corruption, betrayal, courage and family intrigue. It reads like a spy thriller, moving at a fast pace, and even though the reader knows the successful outcome, the suspense never lets up.
Toni Bentley
RaveThe Wall Street Journal... [a] beautiful, affecting book ... Ms. Bentley, a poetic writer, eloquently captures the essence of Serenade ... She dissects this 32-minute ballet in precise, unflinching detail, interweaving reminiscences of her time at the School of American Ballet, which she attended from the age of 10, and life inside the New York City Ballet ... she alternates her descriptions of the ballet with revealing biographies of Tchaikovsky, the great choreographer Marius Petipa...and Marie Taglioni ... The core of Ms. Bentley’s book is an unabashed, heartfelt love letter to Balanchine ... This moving, heartfelt book will not only appeal to lovers of ballet, it will make wistful reading for those dancers who will never have the good fortune to work with such a genius as George Balanchine.
Dana Brown
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... engaging ... ironic and smart, a social history and a poignant coming-of-age story.
Sofi Thanhauser
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalAlthough there is much to be depressed about in this book (the writing at times can turn into a bit of a jeremiad), in wool especially there is reason for optimism ... I couldn’t help smiling at the notion of a group of anarchists crocheting scarves or embroidering table runners. Worn is Ms. Thanhauser’s first book. It’s admirable, meticulously researched, and although occasionally tendentious, makes us pay attention.
Laurence Leamer
RaveThe Wall Street JournalLeamer, a prolific biographer, deftly tells the stories of the stylish, glamorous women whose trust Capote cultivated and then betrayed ... Mr. Leamer has delivered a fast-paced, sensitive tale of the swans, their tumultuous lives and their dismay at Capote’s treachery.
Justine Picardie
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalCatherine is an elusive, haunting presence in Miss Dior ... Ms. Picardie has written a moving and impressive history of wartime politics, death camps, postwar trials, collaboration and the invigorating world of haute couture. She gets much of her Ravensbrück material from victims who left records of their experiences and made small, heartbreaking drawings and gifts to keep their spirits up. Miss Dior is a tricky book to pull off but Ms. Picardie is a sensitive, elegant writer and—hard as it is to imagine—for the most part she succeeds. Although not a coffee table book, it’s beautiful, lavishly illustrated with lovely photographs and drawings, many in color. The admirable Catherine, however, remains largely absent, which, after all, is probably what she would have wanted.
Alison Hawthorne Deming
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... a book to be dipped into. Ms. Deming skips from one topic to another and at times repeats herself. Short chapters juxtapose analyses of the camel-hair coat, lace making and stone weirs with stories about her yellow chiffon thrift-shop prom dress, expertly reshaped by her grandmother, and the sealskin coat from the 1920s Marie gave her as a present ... a moving testament to what we’ll lose if we don’t pay attention.
Rebecca Donner
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMs. Donner’s use of the present tense increases the feeling of inevitability as she unfolds her story to its horrific conclusion. This is a powerful book. A nonfiction narrative with the pace of a political thriller, it’s imbued with suspense and dread. There are occasional lapses in the writing, and sometimes the cliff-hangers are a little forced. But it’s a deeply affecting biography, meticulously researched and illustrated with photographs, documents, diary entries, smuggled notes, and fragments of a Gestapo questionnaire Mildred was made to fill out in prison on her last day alive ... Ms. Donner evocatively brings to life the giddy feeling of freedom under the Weimar regime in Berlin and how swiftly it eroded. Her account of the decline of liberties is harrowing. Her description of the day Hitler was named chancellor, Jan. 30, 1933, puts the reader right into the scene with its details of the Nazi victory parade ... Ms. Donner’s reports of the torture inflicted by the Gestapo are so gruesome I had to stop reading.
Alexander Lobrano
RaveThe Wall Street Journal... beautiful ... reads like a novel, the story threaded with the author’s adventures as a gay man and an outsider, haunted by a childhood secret he reveals only toward the end. He is a poetic writer about food, whether he’s describing his first taste of an apricot soufflé or his boyhood enthusiasm for Chef Boyardee ... Writing in a light, self-deprecating tone, Mr. Lobrano brings each scene to life with sensual details ... He slips comprehensive gastronomical information into his book so deftly, it goes down without your being aware of it. His enthusiasm is infectious, although occasionally he gets a little turgid.
Olivia Williams
PositiveWall Street JournalOlivia Williams has unearthed a wealth of fascinating details about three generations of the eccentric, secretive D’Oyly Carte family, owners the hotel for nearly a century ... As for Richard D’Oyly Carte, Ms. Williams writes: \'His confections sit alongside Sherlock Holmes, gin and tonic, Wimbledon tennis, grand public spectacles of monarchy and Test Match cricket as rarefied features of Victorian Britain that have proved remarkably enduring.\' Her book is a lively testament to that.
Erin French
PositiveWall Street JournalFood is at the front and center of Ms. French’s memoir and she writes lyrically about it. On their first visit to the diner, her grandfather handed her and her sister each a fried doughnut ... Ms. French tells a courageous story without sentimentality or self-pity. She has a sense of humor, an eye for detail and knows how to build tension. But what impresses me most about this book is her evocative writing about food. She describes it so well you can taste it.
Andrew Morton
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalAndrew Morton’s biography of the sisters Elizabeth and Margaret covers well-trodden ground but raises some interesting points along the way ... he does a diligent and well-researched job, examining the closeness of the sisters and their conflicted relationship in a seamless, readable way.
Raphael Cormack
RaveThe Wall Street Journal... a unique, erudite history of the city’s sparkling cultural life from the late 19th century to its decline after the 1952 revolution ... Drawing on memoirs, magazines, newspaper reports and archives, Mr. Cormack has built a riveting, lively picture of Cairo’s nightlife ... Mr. Cormack’s evocative descriptions are packed with bizarre, quirky detail.
Claire Wilcox
RaveThe Wall Street JournalIn this remarkable self-portrait, fashion curator Claire Wilcox has set out mementoes of her life like objects in an exhibition. Short chapters, some only half a page, are displayed like treasures in a cabinet of curiosities, following no chronological order ... Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes juxtaposes the author’s reflections on garments and precious fabrics with glimpses of family, illness, death, motherhood, hair, a lost child, the destruction wrought by moths (the curse of the Romans, who wore wool) and even a leaky roof. The result is magical ...Her spellbinding memoir is like a cherished book of poetry, one to be dipped into over and again.
Richard Thompson Ford
RaveThe Wall Street Journal[A] sharp and entertaining history of the rules of fashion ... In a jam-packed, fact-filled survey, Mr. Ford skillfully examines how fashion, far from being mere frivolity, has shaped people’s lives from the 14th century to the present ... An expert on civil rights and antidiscrimination law, Mr. Ford has plenty to say when it comes to workplace regulations on hairstyles, makeup, tattoos, fingernails and jewelry.
Larry Loftis
RaveThe Wall Street JournalThe Princess Spy is the kind of popular biography that quotes conversations verbatim and tells you what characters are thinking. Mr. Loftis recounts information from the countess’s books in instances where he feels the truth was borne out, and he’s scrupulously documented his findings in 63 pages of endnotes. He divides the story into short chapters that end with cliffhangers, like scenes from a film noir. The result is a fast-paced, edgy and highly engaging yarn ... Mr. Loftis sets a crackling pace and vividly evokes life and politics in supposedly neutral Spain ... As for [the subject\'s] trilogy of memoirs, historical fiction notwithstanding, I confess I found it entertaining. So is Mr. Loftis’s suspenseful fact-based account of this unflappable woman’s remarkable life.
Alexander Larman
RaveThe Wall Street JournalOne of Mr. Larman’s most interesting revelations concerns an attempt on Edward’s life. The would-be killer, working under the assumed name of George McMahon ... [a] sense of astonishment over such an improbable turn of events lends a familiar story excitement, and Mr. Larman brings his cast of characters vividly to life in a fast-paced, lively staging of the drama. It’s as much fun to read as a good political thriller.
Ingrid Seward
MixedThe Wall Street JournalDo we really need yet another book on Prince Philip? What more is there to say about the man? Not a lot. But you can’t believe everything you see in Netflix’s The Crown. Ms. Seward’s biography is more than mere hagiography, although it is indeed reverential. And while she takes us painstakingly over well-trodden ground, she does produce some interesting information about Philip’s later years, in particular his relationships with Diana and Meghan Markle ... Ms. Seward has done a fine job of research, but her writing is flat and at times repetitious, as though some chapters had been previously serialized.
Hugo Vickers
RaveThe Wall Street Journal... gripping ... Mr. Vickers, with his sharp eye for detail, splendidly captures the drama of Gladys’s life and the amazing cast of characters she encountered.
Deborah Madison
PositiveWall Street JournalThis disarming memoir, An Onion in My Pocket, is full of surprises. For a start, it’s not generally known that for almost 20 years [the author] was an ordained Buddhist in a monastic community. Or, that when she was a child, her parents refused to buy her Twinkies, so she stole them. She never had a TV dinner. She never had a TV ... Ms. Madison is not a die-hard vegetarian; she calls herself an omnivore. Above all, she doesn’t believe in imposing beliefs on others. \'I really prefer to be flexible enough to just say thank you for whatever appears on the plate.\' A lesson learned from the monastery, of course, and one of many in this insightful memoir.
Craig Brown
RaveThe Wall Street Journal... riveting ... This quirky, irreverent book, written in the manner of Mr. Brown’s bestselling Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret (2017), is a kaleidoscope of essays, anecdotes, party lists and personal reminiscence. You might think there was nothing more to be said about the Beatles, but Mr. Brown, a perceptive writer and a gifted satirist, makes familiar stories fresh. Along the way he unearths many fascinating tidbits ... a fascinating study of the cultural and social upheaval created by the band ... Mr. Brown has a keen eye for absurdist detail ... After reading this book I was inspired to listen to them again. I felt just as I had the first time: sheer joy.
Barbara Amiel
MixedThe Wall Street JournalMs. Amiel leaves no score unsettled in this waspish, often scandalous, gossipy, vengeful, intimate chronicle of her tumultuous life (there’s even a \'friends and enemies\' list at the end). It’s also disarmingly frank, funny and very well written ... When Ms. Amiel recounts how quickly her society friends and money melted away after her husband’s indictment, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for her. Yet the second half of her book, which is devoted to a nonstop detailed account of the trials, betrayals and legal proceedings, is a slog.
Catherine Grace Katz
RaveThe Wall Street JournalSkillfully written and meticulously researched, it’s an extraordinary work that reveals the human side underlying the politics ... a thoroughly engrossing book, as acute about the contentious politics of the day as it is about the remarkable daughters who participated.
Robert J Mrazek
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... Mrazek unfolds her audacious plan to help prisoners and underground freedom fighters. At the same time he provides a dramatic account of Engelhart’s ordeal as a prisoner of war. Mr. Mrazek weaves their stories into a series of short back-and-forth chapters, organized like scenes from a play. The writing is brisk and energetic; the saga unfolds with enormous suspense ... Mr. Mrazek’s description of victims she saw upon entering their headquarters is so harrowing I couldn’t finish reading it ... Mr. Mrazek, a novelist, historian and former congressman, has researched letters, diaries, memoirs and firsthand reminiscences for his detailed account. His most rewarding source is Carl’s prison journal, written in pencil in a small spiral notepad, a meticulous record of prison events and the names of the soldiers who died, along with his musings and even his dreams. Miraculously this little book (and its owner) survived the sinking of the ship taking him to hard labor in Japan ... Perhaps because of that journal, Carl comes across vividly as an outgoing, empathetic character. Florence, despite her heroism, remains somewhat opaque.
Bill Buford
RaveThe Wall Street JournalYou can almost taste the food in Bill Buford’s Dirt, an engrossing, beautifully written memoir about his life as a cook in France ... Mr. Buford brings a novelistic approach to his story; he is both observer and participant. He’s an entertaining, often comical, raconteur ... His descriptions of his new city are vivid and evocative.
Hannah Rothschild
MixedThe Wall Street JournalNothing is left out in this madcap, convoluted novel, which parodies British aristocracy on one hand and the social-climbing world of new money on the other ... Ms. Rothschild is an intelligent writer and an elegant prose stylist. The first female chair of the National Gallery, she describes her characters’ physical characteristics with the eye of someone who’s spent a lifetime looking carefully at paintings. ... Her first novel, The Improbability of Love (2015), was a clever satire of the art world she knows well. It worked because a thread of suspense kept the story moving. That’s what’s missing from this unwieldy book. The characters are one-dimensional. One exception, the most vividly depicted and believable personality, is an elderly castle resident, Tuffy, sister of the earl ... Even given the meandering plot, with so many comings and goings it’s hard to keep track, Ms. Rothschild provides some good lines ... ne thing the British haven’t lost is their sense of humor, and Ms. Rothschild provides a large dose of it in this quirky satire.
D. J. Taylor
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalProponents of today’s #MeToo movement will shudder ... Mr. Taylor’s account of her wild sex life, worthy of a Feydeau farce, is eye-popping. Skelton wrote five books, including a couple of memoirs that are, \'for sustained, score-settling bitchiness, . . . in a class of their own.\' True, but fun to read ... [an] nsightful and empathetic group biography.
Simon Parkin
RaveThe Wall Street JournalSimon Parkin...has written a thoroughly absorbing book, drawing upon archives and oral histories. It reads like a thriller, with its accounts of nerve-wracking battles, extreme weather, icebergs, and ships sunk in a matter of minutes ... Mr. Parkin brings into focus the heroic lives of Wrens whose arduous work was not only overlooked but also kept an \'official secret\' for 50 years. The women who played the game might never have boarded a ship, but their work saved the lives of countless who did.
Christine Coulson
MixedThe Wall Street JournalThe book is a love letter to the monumental institution where [Coulson] worked for more than 25 years, starting as an intern in the European Paintings department in 1991 ... Ms. Coulson must have spent quite a bit of time dreamily wandering the Met’s galleries letting her imagination run wild. Ghosts appear; furniture and paintings come alive, express their opinions and tell their stories ... Unfortunately, while Ms. Coulson’s erudition is impressive, her writing often descends into sentimentality. Her stories are original and insightful, but the prose is cluttered. Characters don’t merely speak; they chime in, sputter, quip, snort, chomp, shrug, squeak, quiver, screech, bark or warble. Nevertheless, as I wandered through the museum the other day, past tourists frenetically snapping pictures on their cellphones, I thought how Ms. Coulson’s book, for all its flaws, captured the spirit of the place and brought it magically to life.
Hisham Matar
RaveThe Wall Street Journal... an engrossing book, beautifully produced and illustrated with color photographs of paintings. At times it made me think of Watermark, Joseph Brodsky’s elegy to Venice, and W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn. Written in elegant, concise prose, it is a remarkable meditation on life, loss, mourning, exile, friendship and the power of art.
Peter Finn
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalFinn brings to light an unfamiliar side of the Nazi regime ... both a fascinating character-portrait and an intriguing footnote to events that led up to the collapse of Nazi Germany. His book is as well-paced and exciting to read as a good thriller.
Julie Satow
RaveThe Wall Street Journal...[a] lively and entertaining portrait ... Ms. Satow’s book draws the reader in from the start. Its cast of characters includes bellboys, chefs, managers, hotel owners and lawyers. She goes into obsessive detail about the staff, which, when the Plaza first opened, numbered 1,500 workers, including two men who dusted the chandeliers and another whose job was to stamp the hallway ashtrays with the Plaza logo ... Ms. Satow has written a superb history of how a once-magnificent property became its own Potemkin village, a grand luxury hotel on the outside, a hollow shell within.
Ruth Reichl
MixedThe Wall Street Journal\"[Reichl] provides entertaining glimpses into life at Condé Nast ... The restaurant columns Ms. Reichl wrote were clever and incisive, but in this memoir, rhapsodic food descriptions can get the better of her ... Sometimes Ms. Reichl’s prose slides into romance-novel mode ... When Ms. Reichl sticks to reality, her story moves along in a lively fashion. Her description of how she and her staff took food down to Ground Zero after the attack on the World Trade Center is heart-rending ... Save Me the Plums is a lively but rather breathy re-creation of a great decade of magazine food writing, a genre now replaced by apps such as Instagram, where you can find pictures of towering ice-cream sundaes, avocado toast and even lobsters—boiled.\
Maylis De Kerangal Trans. by Sam Taylor
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal\" ...beautifully translated ... By the end of The Cook, apart from his love of food, I knew little more about Mauro as a character than I did of the anonymous subjects of those pictures. But I did understand something else. Ms. de Kerangal is fascinated by the way man tries to put a stamp on the physical world. Each of the three books of hers I’ve read (she’s written nine) centers on a process, but they are less about the transformation of a character than the emotional transformation of the reader, who, by learning how things work, comes to better understand the world. The Cook achieves this admirably, though the meal ended too abruptly, and I was left hungry for more.\
Allie Rowbottom
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalIt is a dark, disturbing story of patriarchy, oppression and sickness, alternating with a meticulously researched feminist history of the Jell-O business and its marketing campaigns directed at women ... Ms. Rowbottom’s accounts of her illness are harrowing and hard to read.
Caroline Weber
RaveThe Wall Street JournalProust’s Duchess, a hefty 715 pages, is rich with intimate details of the extraordinary lives behind the carefully crafted public images of its three heroines. Celebrated names are dropped like confetti over the pages. Liberally illustrated with photographs, the book includes many new findings in the archives of the families; there are 100-plus pages of back matter, including scholarly end notes and two recently discovered articles by Proust ... With an accumulation of intimate and telling detail that would have impressed Proust himself, Ms. Weber has done a remarkable job bringing to life a trio of remarkable women, and a world of culture, glamour and privilege swept away by World War I.
Luke Barr
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalRitz & Escoffier, Luke Barr’s entertaining narrative history, reads like a novel (complete with cliff hangers and descriptions of the characters’ private thoughts) ... Mr. Barr has an eye for comic detail ... Mr. Barr has done a fine job evoking fin-de-siècle London and the characters of the two odd men who played such a pivotal role in that exhilarating time.
Lidia Matticchio Bastianich
RaveThe Wall Street Journal\"My American Dream: A Life of Love, Family, and Food is a beguiling memoir about Lidia Matticchio Bastianich’s path from a bucolic European childhood, abruptly cut short, to her remarkable present-day success as an award-winning television chef, cookbook author and restaurateur ... Ms. Bastianich writes about those early days with a buoyant, optimistic tone ... Food has been the mainstay of Ms. Bastianich’s life.\
Justin Spring
RaveThe Wall Street JournalMr. Spring does a superb job of painting detailed portraits of his six protagonists. He has packed an enormous amount of material into this book, which is erudite, gossipy, entertaining and eminently readable.
Benjamin Taylor
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMr. Taylor writes bracingly of life in the early ’60s, a time at once light-hearted and filled with dread—of polio, race riots and Russian missiles ... An underlying nostalgia, indeed melancholia, pervades Hue and Cry. Trying to overcome Asperger’s in adolescence Mr. Taylor learned to make eye contact and modulate his voice. Later, in college, he studied the popular kids and built himself 'a Frankenstein monster from the parts I liked best about them—a persona very nearly the opposite of who I was when alone.' Mr. Taylor tries to come to grips with himself and his self-image, and to understand how to differentiate emotional realities from actual experience. Hue and Cry is an elegantly written book, erudite, perceptive and at times painfully candid.
Herman Koch, Translated by Sam Garrett
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalIt's fast-paced and riveting. Written in cool, detached prose (deftly translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett), The Dinner is as theatrical and dramatic as a well-crafted play. It's also nasty. It starts off as social satire but shifts gears, and you find yourself in the middle of a horror story ... Paul, the narrator, is a former high-school history teacher who, we are told, has been placed on 'non-active' status ... Gradually we realize that Paul, with his mounting bile and smoldering resentments, is not a reliable narrator. He has a history of violent outbursts and takes medication to control them ... Issues of morality, responsibility and punishment are raised along the way, and a Pinteresque menace lurks under the surface ... In the end, the book sits on the digestion less like an over-indulgent 'fine dining' experience than Chinese food, which, as we all know, leaves you feeling hungry a couple of hours later.
Elena Ferrante
RaveThe Wall Street JournalThe truth is that Elena is no less trapped by her life than Lila is, but she is loath to admit it. Elena's husband is a pedantic bore and a terrible lover. But when Elena's first child is born after an atrocious labor, she lies to Lila, telling her that it was a wonderful experience … While Ms. Ferrante sees her characters through class war, student revolution, and clashes between communists and neo-fascists, her focus is on their interior lives. Her novels present an intimate, often startlingly frank portrait of a friendship between two women who are struggling in the face of rapidly changing sexual politics to break from the old ways and reinvent themselves on their own terms.
Michael Frank
RaveThe Wall Street Journal... a marvelous, clear-eyed memoir about his eccentric family but especially about his glamorous but dangerously possessive Aunt Hank ... The Mighty Franks develops an almost thriller-like pace as Michael begins to draw away from his increasingly desperate aunt ... [a] beautifully written book.
Elizabeth Winder
PanThe Wall Street JournalWas Monroe’s time in New York really a 'year of joy,' as the book’s subtitle has it? Therapy five times a week as required by Strasberg doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs ... Throughout her biography Ms. Winder stresses that Monroe was an intense reader. Why, even at the beach, she was improving her mind. 'She’d throw down her towel and sink into Ulysses.' The rest of us huddle under our umbrellas with books like this one and cringe.
Patricia Bosworth
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalWe tend to think of the 1950s as a puritanical era. For Patricia Bosworth—a one-time actress and the biographer of Montgomery Clift, Diane Arbus and Marlon Brando—they were anything but. Her life was a dramatic saga of ambition, sex, love, affairs, heartbreak and abortion. She courageously reveals it all in The Men in My Life ... The sexual revolution and feminism would come along and change everything. But before they did, women like Patricia Bosworth refused to conform.
Roald Dahl, Ed. by Donald Sturrock
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalFrom early on, the letters show the darkly comic, subversive writing that would make Dahl famous ... Missing from Dahl’s letters is virtually any discussion of sex, which is odd given his openness about everything else ... Without her as his correspondent, he might never have become a writer. Alas, we never get to hear from Sofie.
Tracy Tynan
RaveThe Wall Street Journal...[a] captivating memoir ... Ms. Tynan has written a moving, candid and often hilarious account of her tumultuous childhood in England and New York in the 1950s and ’60s ... Clothes are the warp and weave of “Wear and Tear.” Each chapter is cleverly organized around an item of dress.
Susan Faludi
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal...[a] riviting book ... [Faludi] does a remarkable job tracking down the truth about her father, a person of multiple and contradictory identities. The book’s title, In the Darkroom, has a double meaning. It refers to the job her father held altering images in a Manhattan photo lab and to the dark, mysterious side of her father’s volatile personality ... Ms. Faludi unfolds her father’s story like the plot of a detective novel. 'I had cast myself as a posse of one, tracking my father’s many selves to their secret recesses,' she writes. She interviews her father’s transgender friends in Hungary, wades through stacks of files and photograph albums in her house, and visits family relatives in Israel where she discovers more long-hidden information.
Bill Bryson
MixedThe Wall Street JournalMr. Bryson wears his learning lightly. He has published over a dozen books on a wide range of topics, from Shakespeare to a history of science. But in his new book he’s a bit of a curmudgeon, citing a wide range of irritants from bad grammar to moronic salespeople and litter.
