Sure, Beach’s debut is sometimes stiff and dutiful ... Yet a more self-effacing brand of charisma emerges over the course of the collection ... Despite its title, Adult Drama is a decidedly adolescent book — sometimes in an irksome way, but mostly in a touching way. Its subject, after all, is the searching tremulousness of youth.
The best essays are the ones about Calloway—which is to say, the ones that we’ve already read ... Beach writes with the careful honesty of someone who understands how easily the truth can be distorted ... Almost irritatingly rooted in fact ... Beach has a profile writer’s eye for comic specificity, and she is constantly coming up against larger-than-life personalities, characters she depends on to expand her itinerary.
Beach guides us through the inherent instability of young adulthood with humor and aplomb ... Beach’s voice is a synthesis of whip-smart cultural commentary and vulnerable self-reflection ... An unflinching self-portrait by an artist who’s done with telling any story that isn’t hers.
An elegant memoir-in-essays ... Throughout, Beach’s wide-eyed honesty and utter lack of pretense... contribute to the sense that she’s mined every inch of her experience for these pieces. Incisive and candid, this is a must-read.
