A cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, running a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont, is existentially irked by a climate-challenged world and a citizenry on the brink of civil war. She wonders: Can she pull humanity out of its death spiral by writing a scathingly self-critical memoir about her own greed and privilege?
I found myself needing to get past a mildly annoying coyness that comes with the what-is-real-and-what-isn’t territory ... Very funny and very self-deprecating. Bechdel writes wryly about her own inconsistencies ... here’s something charming and funny on practically every page of Spent ... Even this crank knew that whether Spent is a novel or a memoir-ish doesn’t matter. Fictitious or not, the characters face problems that are very real.
Bechdel achieved the alchemy of memoir at its best, making her singular experience so specific and vivid that it became generalizable ... Signs of real-world doom crop up everywhere in Spent, including in Alison’s dreams. Yet as the novel winds down, a palpable calm arrives.
