Rating: 
Summary: enjoyable read, but . . .
Review: This novel is a nice light read. I liked how 'writerly' the book is: the main character's boyfriend, James, is a writer, and both Elizabeth and James are avid readers, so they are always quoting books and titles. I also liked how Elizabeth's best friend, Rae, acts as a foil to their 'literariness' by quoting Dr. Seuss and TV characters. And I liked how the author shows how Elizabeth's drinking problem is getting worse, and how alcohol affects Elizabeth's relationship with her daughter. But, it's also the lightness of the novel that bothers me. Elizabeth is an alcoholic, and her 7 year old daughter gets molested, and her daughter's best friend is the victim of incest. How can these matters be written about lightly? An aspect of the book that bothered me more was the author's seemingly incidental but derogatory references to African Americans. Rosie, the daughter, is paranoid, and prays at night when she can't sleep. One night she prays that she won't wake up a black person. Another night she lists "black sambo in the garden" as one thing she's fearful of. I can't tell if Anne Lamott is intentionally showing an aspect of racism, how the culture of whiteness is always defined by racism, though this racism is rarely focused on, but comes out in the margins, or if these references are unintentional, simply a representation of Lamott's worldview. I find this aspect troubling because, while I believe that these short comments are an accurate portrayal of one of the scariest forms of racism (the ways whiteness is invisible when you are within white culture, the ways small comments on race briefly show up in conversations but are viewed as harmless), I can't tell what, if anything, Lamott is saying about race.
Rating: 
Summary: hmmm...
Review: Well, I must say, this is book is worthy of both most of the negative and positive comments it has thus far received. On the plus side, Anne Lamott is truly a wonderful writer; her ability to stretch the otherwise quotidian into a relatively entertaining novel attests to that. The characters (especially Rosie) are quite real and the humor makes it fun, while it is at times a bit caustic. Yes, it is the portrayal of a starkly bored, depressed borgeoisie woman trying to get a fix on her life--certainly that is grounds enough to dissuade some people from reading it--but I think what makes it work, and work well, is that it is a very realisticly wrought portrayal. Perhaps it isn't the most exciting facet of life, but it also makes no apologies for it, and in the end accomplishes what all good art should: to bring that little extra bit of appreciation and enlightenment to our everday lives.
Lamott's idiosyncratic literary voice is not far removed from her public one, which I was lucky enough to catch on the radio one night, and I think it is this element that is indispensable to her particular formula, rather than subject material. Anyway, give this one a try. Who knows? You might just ... like it?
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