My favorite books are funny/sad. In my own writing, I aspire for balance between satire and sympathy, going to dark places and shining a light of hilarity on them. Iâm compelled by the psychological complexities of desire, particularly in female charactersâflawed, average women, struggling for empowerment. For me, desire is inextricably bound with loss. Iâm inspired by loss both superficial and profound, from misplaced keys to dying fathers. Many voices clamor in my head, vying for my attention. Iâm interested in ambitious misfits, enraged neurotics, pagans, shamans, healers, dealers, grifters, and spiritual seekers who are forced to adapt, construct, reinvent and contort themselves as reality shifts around them.
Sheila, a playwright, is trying to figure out how to be in the world, and sheâs using her best friend Margaux, a visual artist, to help get her there. This book is filled with trenchant observations, sharp dialogue, and the twists and turns of a female friendship with all the emotional intimacy, creative cross-pollination and cannibalization, rupture and reconciliation that happen during the formative years of young women in their mid-twenties trying to be somebodies. But that doesnât begin to describe the pleasure of reading this astute and hilarious story that begins with the idea of an ugly painting contest. It will make you examine your own world anew.
Chosen as one of fifteen remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write in the 21st century by the book critics of The New York Times
"Funny...odd, original, and nearly unclassifiable...unlike any novel I can think of."âDavid Haglund, The New York Times Book Review
"Brutally honest and stylistically inventive, cerebral, and sexy."âSan Francisco Chronicle
Named a Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Flavorpill, The New Republic, The New York Observer, The Huffington Post
A raw, startling, genre-defying novel of friendship, sex, and loveâŚ
I love I Love Dick! This is a hilarious, shocking, keenly intelligent interrogative adventure into the art world and ideas about stalking a muse and being female. The book was published in 1997 but I didnât discover it until a decade later, so I was late to the game. In her forward, Eileen Myles describes Chris Kraus as âmarching boldly into self-abasement and self-advertisement,â which is a perfect way of putting it. Shredding the veil between reality and fiction, in her relentless pursuit of Dick (a real person), Chris Kraus embraces the world, no holds barred. If youâre curious about being female, being an artist, being a failure (whatever that means), chasing your desires, and fighting your way out of limitations both within and without, this riveting, lacerating, revealing, surprising book is for you.
When Chris Kraus, an unsuccessful artist pushing 40, spends an evening with a rogue academic named Dick, she falls madly and inexplicably in love, enlisting her husband in her haunted pursuit. Dick proposes a kind of game between them, but when he fails to answer their letters Chris continues alone, transforming an adolescent infatuation into a new form of philosophy.
Blurring the lines of fiction, essay and memoir, Chris Kraus's novel was a literary sensation when it was first published in 1997. Widely considered to be the most important feminist novel of the past two decades, I Love Dick isâŚ
Over the past 50 years, scientists have made incredible progress in the application of genetic research to human health care and disease treatment. Innovative tools and techniques, including gene therapy and CRISPR-Cas9 editing, can treat inherited disorders that were previously untreatable, or prevent them from happening in the first place.âŚ
This book is brilliant and heartbreaking. Iâve read everything by Gabrielle Bell. I marvel at her artistry, her linework, her drawing and composition and incisive visual storytelling. If I sound like a fangirl itâs because I am. Everything is Flammable is a dark, funny, brutal, honest story, full of heart and originality. When Gabrielleâs mother loses everything in a fire, Gabrielle uproots her east coast life and heads west to rural California to help. But she has her own issues, and the trip pulls her back to her semi-feral childhood as she and her mother try to build a new home on top of the ashes. Itâs a searing examination of a mother-daughter love, with illuminating artwork, immediate and poignant visuals, and mordant observations.
"Bell's pen becomes a kind of laser, first illuminating the surface distractions of the world, then scorching them away to reveal a deeper reality that is almost too painful and too beautiful to bear."-- Alison Bechdel, Fun Home, Are You My Mother In Gabrielle Bell's much anticipated graphic memoir, she returns from New York to her childhood town in rural Northern California after her mother's home is destroyed by a fire. Acknowledging her issues with anxiety, financial hardships, memories of a semi-feral childhood, and a tenuous relationship with her mother, Bell helps her mother put together a new home onâŚ
Over Easy is the first part of Madgeâs story, followed by The Customer is Always Wrong. They can be read separately as each stands on its own, but are best absorbed one after the other. These books are visually inventive and full of unforgettable characters who leap off the page and lodge in your imagination. The story follows Madge, an open-hearted artist who finds refuge and adventure in the wise-cracking, fast-talking, drug-taking world of the Imperial CafĂŠ where she gets a job as a waitress after being denied financial aid to cover her last year in art school. Full of wit and pathos, Mimi Pond captures the perfect balance of hilarious and heartbreaking, all with fantastic drawings. She makes it look easy!
Over Easy is a brilliant portrayal of a familiar coming-of-age story. After being denied financial aid to cover her last year of art school, Margaret finds salvation from the straight-laced world of college and the earnestness of both hippies and punks in the wisecracking, fast-talking, drug-taking group she encounters at the Imperial Cafe, where she makes the transformation from Margaret to Madge. At first she mimics these new and exotic grown-up friends, trying on the guise of adulthood with some awkward but funny stumbles. Gradually she realizes that the adults she looks up to are a mess of contradictions, misplacedâŚ
Me and The Times offers a fresh perspective on those pre-internet days when the Sunday sections of The New York Times shaped the countryâs political and cultural conversation. Starting in 1967, Robert Stock edited seven of those sections over 30 years, innovating and troublemaking all the way.
I started this book because I liked the drawing style. Within the first 3 pages, I couldnât put the book down. Itâs not just Jennifer Haydenâs illustration skills or the freshness of her lines and patterns and mark-making and the way each panel is a masterpiece in itself, itâs the story that pulled me in. This is a book about life and love and family, told with humor, insight, and intelligence. In Jennifer Haydenâs words, the book is âa dramatic comedy sewn together from real events and real emotions,â but that doesnât begin to convey the richness and depth of this narrative journey and the quirky sarcastic honest way it tells it like it is. The story still resonates long after I finished reading it.
When Jennifer Hayden was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 43, she realized that her tits told a story. Across a lifetime, they'd held so many meanings: hope and fear, pride and embarrassment, life and death. And then they were gone. Now, their story has become a way of understanding her story. Growing up flat-chested and highly aware of her inadequacies... heading off to college, where she "bloomed" in more ways than one... navigating adulthood between her mother's mastectomy, her father's mistress, and her musician boyfriend's problems of his ownnot to mention his sprawling family. Then the kidsâŚ
Desire, Desperation, and Mother-Daughter Family PlanningâWhat Could Go Wrong?
When Mary and Ann agree to a surrogacy partnership everything goes awry. Ann, a preschool teacher, is desperate for the children she physically canât have. Mary, a 50-year-old pagan jeweler, hopes to make amends for years of maternal neglect. Together, they plunge into the expensive, morally complex world of reproductive technology and an intimacy neither they, nor Annâs husband, Joel, is prepared for. Sharp and audacious, Made By Mary is a wise, tragicomic exploration of the complex ties of family, with a little bit of magic thrown in. Brown understands that, between a daughterâs debt, and a motherâs due, there is a whole territory of resentment, love, fury, devotion, and mutual incomprehension.
Royal Academy, London 1919: Lily has put her student days in St. Ives, Cornwall, behind herâa time when her substitute mother, Mrs. Ramsay, seemingly disliked Lilyâs portrait of her and Louis Grier, her tutor, never seduced her as she hoped he would. In the years since, sheâs been a suffragetteâŚ
This is a personal story of Carole and her rise from the ashes of tragedy as a fourteen year old, to success in many areas of her life. Carole graphically depicts the story of how success is the result of a passion and determination that comes from deep inside