Not Becoming my Mother by Ruth Reichl

Not Becoming My Mother is a sweet and sad paean to the author’s mother, who was a smart, career-minded woman forced by the era she lived in as well as her parents to content herself to be a wife and mother, both roles she had very little talent for. The descriptions of the snacks she [...]

American Rust by Philipp Meyer

American Rust is a bleak story of a bleak town, which in the past had a flourishing steel mill that provided good-paying jobs but now consists of only the old, the young, and the defeated. Everyone else has left to seek their fortunes elsewhere. The heroes, Isaac and Billy, are smart (Isaac) and had a [...]

Accidentally, on Purpose by Mary Pols

Accidentally, on Purpose is Mary Pols’s father’s apt characterization of how she got pregnant: without meaning to, certainly, but very much wanting to. After a one-night stand with an unsuitable man (too young, too lowly-employed, too apathetic) she decides to keep the baby, figuring that at her age she may not get the chance again. [...]

Opting In by Amy Richards

Opting In has a wonderful title: written in response to the insidious “opt-out” movement through which educated women are supposedly dropping careers for babies, it aims at describing how feminists relate to families and children.
In fact, it’s a very awkward book: half personal anecdotes about her children, her non-husband partner, and her role as the [...]