RaveAlta\"Martin’s text incorporates the voices of Ursula K. Le Guin, Barry Lopez, Ana Mendieta, Masanobu Fukuoka, Donna Haraway, and others. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Tom Waits make appearances, as well. We learn about the spiritual communes of 1970s California, the environmental history of Santa Cruz, wine harvests, and pruning as a form of jazz improv. The prose is beautiful, and digressions on fire poppies, smoke, Rosh Hashanah, devil winds, and incendiary dresses are pure pleasure in the midst of this grave inquest ... The Last Fire Season wants us to see also—to recognize that our seasons in California are not only extreme but are becoming unrecognizable, and that we need new strategies \'to inhabit the new shape of these cycles of damage and renewal.\'\
Roxane Gay
RaveThe Los AngelesWritten from Mireille's perspective, An Untamed State is an account of what is normally unaccountable: a level of trauma that, even if it is survived, is often too painful to relate … Gay has created a straightforward style and defiant voice that drive Mireille's recollections. Her captivity experience is suspenseful, immediate and at times mercilessly realistic. Mireille's memories of her time before the kidnapping provide a respite for her and the reader. Because Mireille is portrayed as a flawed, three-dimensional person, not just a symbol of suffering, Gay's novel puts a face, a name and especially a voice to the rampant global violence against women.
Ed. Meredith Maran
PositiveThe Los Angeles TimesRather than a craft textbook theorizing the why and how of memoir writing, this collection reads like a series of interviews with some of the most well known memoirists working today ... The authors also offer glimpses into their writing processes, their development as artists and occasionally, surprising personal details, unpopular opinions and literary gossip.
