Small Town Girls is part coming-of-age story, part social history –– Jayne Anne Phillips’s love letter to the place and the people who have shaped her perceptions and her writing.
It seems unlikely that such a hodgepodge could offer the thoroughness of a traditional autobiography, but Small Town Girls does. The book’s format is an apt reflection of its themes. Like the best of Ms. Phillips’s fiction, its structure mimics the fracturing of modern American life as she has witnessed it ... Both epic and intimate ... This has been her literary project: to remember, to revive, to conjure, to connect, in images shuffled and shaped into stories.
Phillips’ essays treat the reader to a mosaic of her voices: humorous, scholarly, pensive, nostalgic. A sparkling introduction to the author for those who don’t know her, and a peek behind the scenes of her life for those who do.
Quietly devastating ... Like much of her work, Small Town Girls is worth savoring and is deeply satisfying. Though it may be less cohesive than a linear memoir, it nevertheless retains the intimacy that we expect from the book’s title ... In the end, Small Town Girls offers a masterclass in the art of the personal essay, one that reminds us of the tools at our disposal to negotiate our confidences, our memories, and our secret lives.
