The memoir offers something more durable and estimable than facile intimacy: the unmistakable ring of truth, achieved through rigorous thought and beautifully articulated.
[A]ll along, Oates has rejected the terms of the memoir. Now, having nearly completed the chronologically connected body of the book, she seems to turn away from the reader as well. It’s an odd, alienating way to leave things. The hodgepodge of biographical scraps she offers in the last two brief sections...does little to make up for the reader’s disappointment.
