PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewBrottman shines in her depiction of the victim’s mother, Cheryl ... And Brottman’s treatment of Reddit, the Websleuths forums and commentary from self-anointed YouTube experts makes for a particularly damning portrait of our culture’s consumption of crime ... It never becomes clear why she is drawn to this particular crime, or what larger story she wants to tell.
Katherine Sharp Landdeck
RaveNewsdayThe origin story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, is lovingly and meticulously wrought by Landdeck who, as a pilot herself, powerfully illustrates the freedom and independence the cockpit gave these women in both the sky and their lives on the ground. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the Golden Age of Aviation, Landdeck traces the innovative beginnings of the WASP through a rich combination of photos, archives, diaries, interviews, newspapers and reportage ... Landdeck contextualizes the fierce intelligence and ambition of these women with the reality of their time, including issues related to class, race, and sex ... charts a powerful story of reinvention, community and ingenuity born out of global upheaval; that we can remember and read about them during our current global crisis makes the story and sacrifice of the WASP a timely blueprint of female innovation.
Alexandra Jacobs
RaveNewsday... under debut author Alexandra Jacobs’ serene and critical hand, Still Here also offers vulnerability alongside vulgarity and authenticity alongside the expected avarice ... Jacobs utilizes the massive cache of information the actress left in her wake, including copious interviews and her archives. This meticulous research allows for the conjuring of a surprising and complex realness that serves as a deep and resounding undercurrent to the public persona so widely known. There is nothing necessarily explosive or sensational here, though there are plenty of big names; it is the way Jacobs tracks the quiet darknesses of Stritch’s private life that gives this book its teeth ... Jacobs captures Stritch’s ambivalent relationship with stardom early on ... The power of Jacobs’ biography is the way she sets Stritch’s story against the canvas of a shifting century, allowing us to watch as the world expands beyond these limiting boxes for female performers, and cheer as Stritch was able to expand herself.
Lindy West
PositiveNewsdayThere is less scene, more exposition; less vulnerability, more swearing; less character-building, more, well, just, more. More anger, preening, intelligence and implicatiom ... West is often most effective when she pulls the unexpected into her laser view, such as the creators of South Park, Adam Sandler’s movies, or Chip and Joanna Gaines of the television series Fixer Upper ... Along with the expected brilliant humor, West’s writing can also be beautiful and bewitching ... West continues to employ history, logic, and her own brand of extreme truth-telling in this new collection, a well-timed rallying cry as we enter into the next election cycle.
Carmen Maria Machado
RaveNewsweekIn the Dream House gleamingly smashes our notion of memoir, relocating Machado’s genre-bending mastery from fiction to nonfiction. As with her short story collection, an intoxicating mix of fabulism and horror, sci-fi and gutting realism, Machado’s playfulness on the page is intoxicating ... The book arranges itself into an accordion of pain and pleasure and fear, a card catalog of emotion and fact, certainty and doubt, as she adds flesh to a barely there skeleton ... Regardless of a reader’s orientation, it is impossible not to see yourself behind one of these hundreds of doors ... At first glance, this fragmentation looks willy-nilly, as if one could open the book to any page and read forward. But the overall effect is more that of a Pointillist painting, a snapped-together aha moment from afar ... At times, the dizzying opening and closing of doors to the different rooms in this book creates a fun house effect ... Ultimately, In the Dream House employs the kind of sci-fi time travel Machado is known for in her fiction; the other \'you\' on the page has managed to reach back in time and resurrect herself.
