Amy Scribner

NonfictionMemoir

A photographer on the front lines of war

Review by Amy Scribner

Photojournalist Lynsey Addario has reported for the New York Times and other media from the frontlines in the war on terror and the Arab Spring. In her vivid memoir, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War, Addario shows what it’s like to put oneself in danger in search of images to help the world understand life in a war zone.

“We want to see more fighting, to get the freshest, latest news, to keep reporting until that unknowable last second before injury, capture, death,” Addario writes. “We are greedy by nature: We always want more than what we have.”

Addario is an honest and absorbing writer, whether she’s recalling her childhood in Connecticut—her father left the family when Addario was 8 after reveling he was gay and going to live with his boyfriend in New York—or the fiery relationship with a young man in Mexico that consumed her 20s. But it’s when she turns to her work that the book shifts from interesting to spellbinding. Addario has seen the best and worst of human nature as a war correspondent, and she shares it all in words and in many of her stunning photographs.

It’s What I Do is one of the most memorable books I’ve read this year. Here is a youngish woman, married with a child, who feels an almost physical pull to cover the hardest of news, in Darfur, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq. She reports from the battle zones themselves, but also searches out the families—especially the women—impacted by strife. It’s a mystifying career choice for most of us, and in this book, Addario helps explain why anyone would do what she does.

 “My friends and family sometimes asked why photographers didn’t just take fewer assignments to preserve their marriages or relationships, why they didn’t simply become a different type of photographer, one who worked in some sunny studio adjacent to his home,” she writes. “The truth was, the difference between a studio photographer and a photojournalist was the same as the difference between a political cartoonist and an abstract painter. The only thing the two had in common was the blank page.”

Photojournalist Lynsey Addario has reported for the New York Times and other media from the frontlines in the war on terror and the Arab Spring. In her vivid memoir, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War, Addario shows what it’s like to put oneself in danger in search of images to help the world understand life in a war zone.
FictionShort Stories

The relationship spectrum

Review by Amy Scribner

This radiant collection of short stories features a set of flawed yet sympathetic women in a whole mess of compromising positions.

Nina starts an affair with a man she meets while out running. Josie struggles to extract herself from a sizzling online relationship that fizzles when she meets Billy in real life. Gwen doesn’t lie, exactly, but if her folks want to believe Boris is her boyfriend and not just a roommate, who is she to burst their bubble? And Maya—who appears in several quietly delicious installments—slouches her way toward a mature relationship with some serious detours along the way.

Many of the women in these beautifully wrought stories are single, but they are anything but carefree or mellow. Just as we do in real life, they self-sabotage in ways huge and small, making choices based solely on their heart with no input from their head. First-time author Katherine Heiny takes great care to make her characters relatable even in their imperfections. She paints sweetly resonant moments that also can be very funny:

“For months and months Josie thought about Billy when she should have been wondering what to make for supper—or what to say at Kit’s parent-teacher conference or where Mickey’s lunch card was or if she left the oven on—and now here she is with Billy, and all she can think about is whether she used the last of the onions the night before. (She’s pretty sure she did.)”

Single, Carefree, Mellow is named for a story in which Maya ponders leaving her boyfriend of five years, then decides there is “such a thing as too much loss.” It’s a poignant moment that sums up this smart exploration of love and betrayal, and that fine line between happiness and pain.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

This radiant collection of short stories features a set of flawed yet sympathetic women in a whole mess of compromising positions.
NonfictionMemoir

Underneath it all

Review by Amy Scribner

Andie Mitchell had been overweight for as long as she could remember. But cutely plump as a school-age kid became morbidly obese at age 20, when she weighed nearly 300 pounds. Growing up with a depressed, alcoholic father and a mother who worked round the clock to pay the bills, Mitchell grew to view food—any food—as her friend and companion.

Bowls of sugary cereal kept her company for hours while her mom worked and her dad slept. Drive-thru cheeseburgers rewarded her for staying out of the way while her mother cleaned other people’s homes.

“Eating made me forget,” she writes. “Filling my belly stuffed my mind so completely that no space existed for sadness.”

Despite her weight, Mitchell had plenty of friends and several boyfriends. She resigned herself to a lifetime of obesity. But when size 16 became size 22 during her freshman year of college, and she saw the fear in her mother’s eyes, she knew something had to change. During the following summer and a semester in Rome, she learned to appreciate good food in moderation and discovered that exercise doesn’t have to hurt. Slowly, the numbers began to creep downward as her self-worth creeped up.

It Was Me All Along is the strikingly honest story of one woman’s long journey to self-acceptance. It’s a must-read memoir for anyone who has used food to numb the pain rather than nourish the body.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

 

Click here to read an excerpt from It Was Me All Along on Read It Forward.

Read It Forward is a Book Geek's best friend. RIF offers two weekly newsletters: Read It First book giveaways and What We’re Reading, book collections that will surprise and delight you. Read it first and pass it on … read it forward! 

Andie Mitchell had been overweight for as long as she could remember. But cutely plump as a school-age kid became morbidly obese at age 20, when she weighed nearly 300 pounds. Growing up with a depressed, alcoholic father and a mother who worked round the clock to pay the bills, Mitchell grew to view food—any food—as her friend and companion.
FictionPopular Fiction

The cost of keeping up a perfect facade

Review by Amy Scribner

Grace Chapman has a seemingly perfect life: She’s a lifestyle icon with a best-selling author husband, a loving daughter and a gorgeous home outside of New York City. A former cookbook editor, she now cooks legendary meals for the local women’s shelter and plans community fundraisers.

But look closer. Grace’s charming, handsome husband, Ted, has a vicious temper, a mammoth ego and a wandering eye. One moment a loving, attentive spouse, Ted can switch in an instant, yelling and blaming Grace for the slightest mishap. After growing up in the shadow of her mother’s mental illness, Grace cowers when her husband berates her. She worries that mental illness lurks in her own genes.

When their dependable, longtime assistant quits, Grace hires a new assistant to organize their lives—and keep Ted in check. Beth gets their lives in much-needed order, managing Ted’s temper as easily as she manages their calendar and quickly becoming indispensable to the couple.

But Grace can’t shake the feeling that there’s something amiss. As plain, timid, competent Beth begins transforming into a glamorous Grace clone, Grace wonders whether she is slowly being replaced in her own life, and she has to decide whether it is a life she wants to fight for.

With Saving Grace, Jane Green proves yet again that she is one of the most dependably compelling writers of women’s fiction around. Her characters are flawed but likable, her stories intriguing but believable. Even when she occasionally lapses into lazy prose (“her heart breaks open into a smile”), Green consistently delivers compassionate, relatable stories about the issues facing contemporary women. Grace is a vintage Green character: all-too-human and stronger than she thinks.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Grace Chapman has a seemingly perfect life: She’s a lifestyle icon with a best-selling author husband, a loving daughter and a gorgeous home outside of New York City. A former cookbook editor, she now cooks legendary meals for the local women’s shelter and plans community fundraisers.
NonfictionEssays

Looking at life from both sides

Review by Amy Scribner

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, December 2014

When Meghan Daum published her first collection in 2001—the brilliant My Misspent Youth—her fresh, honest musings as a Manhattan 20-something immediately made her the envy of a generation of aspiring writers.

Now Daum is approaching middle age, but her voice is as singular and her insights as poignant as ever. A married newspaper columnist in Los Angeles, Daum deals with aging parents, health scares and her decision to remain child-free in a baby-obsessed world.

Right out of the gate, it’s easy to see why this collection of essays is called The Unspeakable. Daum starts off with the searing “Matricide,” in which she recalls her fraught relationship with her now-​deceased mother, a woman she calls a “flashy, imperious, hyperbolic theater person” with a “phoniness that I was allergic to on every level.” Unspeakable, indeed. And yet . . . who can say they’ve never been annoyed with their mom? The rest of us just don’t have the ability to say it quite as potently and incisively as Daum.

Reflections on love and death are woven throughout the essays. In the melancholy “Not What it Used to Be,” Daum writes wistfully of being her Older Self looking back on her Younger Self, “someone who took multiple forms, who could go in any direction, who might be a bartender or a guitar player or a lesbian or a modern dancer or an office temp on Sixth Avenue.”

In the bittersweet “Difference Maker,” Daum examines her decision not to have children, how she and her husband struggle to ignore an amorphous Central Sadness in their relationship and find satisfaction in their “life of dog hikes and quiet dinners and friends coming over on the weekends.”

Daum draws out larger truths about life whether she’s writing about Joni Mitchell, foodies or dogs. The Unspeakable is a stunner of a book about settling into one’s skin.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When Meghan Daum published her first collection in 2001—the brilliant My Misspent Youth—her fresh, honest musings as a Manhattan 20-something immediately made her the envy of a generation of aspiring writers.
NonfictionArts & CultureArt

Modern artists

Review by Amy Scribner

One of the first artists featured in Sarah Thornton’s fascinating 33 Artists in 3 Acts is American Jeff Koons, who tells her that he never wants people to feel small when they view his art. Clearly Thornton ascribes to a similar principle. In this witty, smart follow-up to her 2008 bestseller, Seven Days in the Art World, Thornton generously cracks the sometimes perplexing code of modern art.

She cleverly divides her artist profiles into three sections. First, Thornton explores artists’ attitudes toward politics and power in their work. She then probes the network of relationships an artist needs to succeed, before finally looking at the artistry itself.

Let’s face it: Artists are, by and large, a weird bunch. (Laurie Simmons, the mother of “Girls” creator Lena Dunham, spends part of the book toting a silicone Japanese sex doll between her Tribeca loft and her home in Connecticut as she “gets to know” her before creating a series of photographs.) While the strangeness of artists is entertaining, Thornton goes beyond the quirks by asking each to articulate their own definition of an artist.

For the most part, she presents their answers without judgment. But Thornton is no pushover. When she sits down with Koons—who is a millionaire many times over for his art—she gently reminds him that she is “familiar with his famous adages and anecdotes so it would be great if he could resist his penchant for reiterating them and answer my questions as directly as possible.” She gets points for trying to draw more than pat answers from a man who, by virtue of his wild success, no longer needs to answer for anything.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

One of the first artists featured in Sarah Thornton’s fascinating 33 Artists in 3 Acts is American Jeff Koons, who tells her that he never wants people to feel small when they view his art. Clearly Thornton ascribes to a similar principle. In this witty, smart follow-up to her 2008 bestseller, Seven Days in the Art World, Thornton generously cracks the sometimes perplexing code of modern art.
FictionPopular Fiction

The destructive power of grief

Review by Amy Scribner

Curtis and Kathleen Kaufman are living every parent’s worst nightmare: Their son, Daniel, a musical prodigy attending Oberlin College, was mowed down by a drunk driver. In The Fragile World, Paula Treick DeBoard explores the aftermath of this shattering event.

The Kaufmans’ solid marriage disintegrates in their mourning. Their other child, Olivia, a lovely and decidedly normal preteen (there is really only room for one prodigy per family), feels the pressure to fill the hole left by Daniel. Seeking a fresh start, Kathleen moves to Omaha. Olivia stays with her father in Sacramento, where they subsist on frozen food and never address their lingering pain.

When Curtis gets a letter notifying him that Daniel’s killer is up for early parole, something in him snaps. He makes plans to bring Olivia, by now a goth-wannabe who has given up on ever filling Daniel’s shoes, to her mother before continuing to Oberlin to face the man who destroyed his family. From here, The Fragile World takes a turn from a lovely, quiet meditation on grief to one of the most recipe-for-disaster road trips since Thelma and Louise got in that Ford Thunderbird. Eventually, Curtis must decide whether his thirst for revenge is more powerful than his instinct to keep his family intact.

The Fragile World is told alternately from Curtis’ and Olivia’s viewpoints, and DeBoard perfectly captures the angsty, ironic tone of a teenage girl hiding oceans of pain. It is a beautifully evocative journey through a family’s darkest hours, one that reminds us that even the most broken among us are capable of resilience.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Curtis and Kathleen Kaufman are living every parent’s worst nightmare: Their son Daniel, a musical prodigy attending Oberlin College, was mowed down by a drunk driver. In The Fragile World, Paula Treick DeBoard explores the aftermath of this shattering event.
NonfictionTechnology

The brains behind the computer revolution

Review by Amy Scribner

When we think about technology and innovation, the names that come to mind immediately are Bill Gates and Steve Jobs—maybe Steve Wozniak or Paul Allen for the more hard-core geeks among us.

But in this fascinating look at the digital revolution, Walter Isaacson reveals just how many brilliant minds it took to bring us our current life of iPads and Facebook. As in his seminal biographies of Jobs, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson deftly profiles those throughout history who could marry art and science to advance technology.

The Innovators starts not in 1980s Seattle or in Silicon Valley.  It starts in 1830s England with Ada Byron, the daughter of Lord Byron. More commonly known as Ada, Countess of Lovelace, Isaacson dubs this member of the nobility “an iconic figure in the history of computing,” who with her colleagues envisioned a machine that could “store, manipulate, process and act upon anything that could be expressed in symbols.” She was a woman far, far ahead of her time, one who understood that technology would be nothing without human creativity.

It’s a surprising and beguiling start to a book that mixes biographical sketches of key innovators with in-depth—occasionally dense for the non-techies among us—descriptions of decisive moments in technology. What emerges as most striking is how rarely true eureka moments happened alone: Allen and Gates writing code as Lakeside High School students. Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn creating the beautifully simple early video game Pong. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, creators of Google, whose collaboration Isaacson likens to “two swords sharpening each other.”

The Innovators brings a fresh eye to the depths of human potential, even as he reminds us that technological innovation is an incredibly slow process. As Isaacson writes, “The digital age may seem revolutionary, but it was based on expanding the ideas handed down from previous generations.”

When we think about technology and innovation, the names that come to mind immediately are Bill Gates and Steve Jobs—maybe Steve Wozniak or Paul Allen for the more hard-core geeks among us.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Making sense of home

Review by Amy Scribner

This luminous novel is only Robinson’s fourth in a writing career that has spanned nearly as many decades—which makes each one of her works all the more precious.

In Lila, we revisit the Iowa town of Gilead, setting of the eponymous Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and of Home. This time, Robinson tells the story of a young woman who was neglected as a child and rescued by a kind-hearted, fiercely loyal drifter called Doll. Lila grows up traveling with Doll and a down-on-their-luck group who find work where they can along backcountry roads.

Lila is barely surviving when she lands in Gilead, seeking shelter from the rain in a church. She finds herself drawn to the local pastor, a soft-spoken man whom Robinson fans will recognize. But after a lifetime of abandonment, uncertainty and poverty, Lila wrestles with lingering mistrust of the world, and doubts her newfound security as the pastor’s wife and a mother-to-be.

“Even now, thinking of the man who called himself her husband, what if he turned away from her?” Robinson writes. “It would be nothing. What if the child was no child? There would be an evening and a morning. The quiet of the world was terrible to her, like mockery. She had hoped to put an end to these thoughts, but they returned to her, and she returned to them.”

As Lila begins to come to grips with her past, she must decide whether her future is in Gilead. She slowly begins to see what she can offer to her new family and her community, while honoring the transient family of her youth.

In her gorgeous, unadorned prose, Robinson returns to both a place (Gilead) and a theme (keeping faith in a world that can be unbearably harsh and beautiful) that have proven to be so fertile. Lila is a stunning and moving exploration of family and faith, and how to find one’s place in the world.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

This luminous novel is only Robinson’s fourth in a writing career that has spanned nearly as many decades—which makes each one of her works all the more precious.
NonfictionMemoirFashion

A legendary personal stylist’s candid story

Review by Amy Scribner

Eighty-six-year-old personal shopper Betty Halbreich stole the show in a 2013 documentary called Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s. Her slightly haughty demeanor was belied by a twinkle and a smile playing at her lips. There’s more to this story, she seemed to be saying.

Is there ever. In her deliciously candid memoir, I’ll Drink to That, Halbreich recounts her life in fashion. Born into a wealthy Chicago family, Betty was a lonely only child who adored but rarely saw her glamorous parents. A classic beauty, she was married at 20 to a dashing and wealthy New Yorker, Sonny Halbreich. Her only job was to dress well for their extravagant life.

But when infidelity cracked their marriage open after several years and two children, Halbreich attempted suicide and was briefly hospitalized. As she adapted to life as a single, middle-aged mother, she got her first-ever job. Using her legendary ability to put her own twist on an outfit, she worked her way up in the fashion world before joining Bergdorf Goodman (“Xanadu. Candy Land.”) in 1976.

Upper management soon took note of her ability to find the perfect ensemble for every lady who came through the door—no matter her shape or budget. After being put to the test by successfully dressing the legendarily stylish Babe Paley, Halbreich got her own personal shopping department.

“I took the lady of leisure style off my back and put it on others, particularly women who didn’t have only wealth but also big lives,” she writes. “With charities, multiple households around the world, and complicated families to run, they wanted to be fashionable but not look like everyone else. And they certainly couldn’t be seen in the same dress twice—in the past I never would have either.”

Halbreich shows very little sign of slowing down. She styles celebrities, socialites and the now-grown children of women she’s worked with, all of whom seek her trademark honesty and sharp eye. 

In this superbly entertaining, surprisingly poignant memoir, Halbreich proves that fashion is about so much more than clothes: It’s a reflection of personal identity and self-worth, whether you buy your outfits at Walmart or Bergdorf.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Eighty-six-year-old personal shopper Betty Halbreich stole the show in a 2013 documentary called Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s. Her slightly haughty demeanor was belied by a twinkle and a smile playing at her lips. There’s more to this story, she seemed to be saying.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Infiltrating the battlefield

Review by Amy Scribner

It’s estimated that around 500 women passed themselves off as men so they could fight in the Civil War. In the haunting Neverhome, Laird Hunt deftly imagines one such situation and its heartbreaking repercussions.

She calls herself Ash Thompson, a farmer who enlists to fight for the Union. Ash quickly earns a reputation as a brave and stoic soldier, even in the direst of battles. But Ash is actually Constance, an Indiana farmer’s wife who left her husband behind to fight. Her reasons become clearer as this beautifully paced novel unfolds, and Ash goes from a war hero to a broken woman looking for a way home.

After Ash is revealed as a woman and accused of spying for the South, she is jailed in deplorable conditions, nearly going mad while awaiting a chance to escape. On her trek back to her farm, many of those she encounters help her in their own ways: a trio of orphaned sisters; the wife of the General who commanded Ash. Others stick to their own path, fighting their demons as they make their way home from war. “Here and there you would cross a discharged veteran still had bombs and bullets flying in his eyes,” she said.

Hunt is at the top of his game with Neverhome, a mesmerizing book whose quiet surface belies its rich depths, up until its heartbreaking conclusion. His impeccable ear for authentic Civil War-era dialect—and his vivid battle scenes—breathe life into a novel that explores what happens when the call of duty collides with the lure of home.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s estimated that around 500 women passed themselves off as men so they could fight in the Civil War. In the haunting Neverhome, Laird Hunt deftly imagines one such situation and its heartbreaking repercussions.
NonfictionMemoir

The inspiring story of a Cambodian orphanage

Review by Amy Scribner

In a Rocket Made of Ice is an extraordinary book about an extraordinary place. Wat Opot Children’s Community is a Cambodian orphanage started with $50 by Wayne Matthysse, a former Vietnam medic driven to make life better for children in war-torn countries. The orphanage is home to children and women affected by HIV and AIDS, where they can get the powerful antiretroviral drugs they need to stay healthy, as well as education and a community in which they belong.

Gail Gutradt, a Maine native who has spent several stints volunteering at Wat Opot, paints an achingly beautiful portrait of the place, which may not have many material resources, but is imbued with a much-needed sense of family for children who have been orphaned by AIDS.

“In truth, daily experience at Wat Opot is complex and chaotic,” she writes. “I wake up early in the morning and someone comes running up to me for a hug. Often there are several kids hanging off my arms on the way to breakfast. Most of the day it is kids playing, running in packs, sulking, hugging, laughing, dancing, studying, doing what children do. You play with them, pick them up when they cry, let them nap on your shoulder. It is easy to forget that some are HIV positive. . . . It’s totally normal in some ways, while at the same time it is exceptional.”

The ultimate goal of Wat Opot is not just to get kids healthy, but to instill in them a belief that they can live and thrive among other Cambodians, where the stigma of HIV and AIDS lingers. Many of the children go on to university, a testament to the powerful work being done on a shoestring and a prayer. Gutradt has given us an inspiring, unforgettable book.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In a Rocket Made of Ice is an extraordinary book about an extraordinary place. Wat Opot Children’s Community is a Cambodian orphanage started with $50 by Wayne Matthysse, a former Vietnam medic driven to make life better for children in war-torn countries. The orphanage is home to children and women affected by HIV and AIDS, where they can get the powerful antiretroviral drugs they need to stay healthy, as well as education and a community in which they belong.
NonfictionMemoir

Life lessons from working with stiffs

Review by Amy Scribner

Amid the 21st-century glut of overindulgent memoirs, The Removers is a poignant, near-perfect addition to the genre. Andrew Meredith writes of growing up in a crumbling Philadelphia neighborhood, his family quietly imploding in the wake of a scandal that cost his father his university job.

A once promising student, Meredith drops out of various colleges and halfheartedly dates various women throughout his 20s. His zombie existence is punctuated by possibly the worst job in the world: Transporting bodies from houses and hospitals to a funeral home, then cremating them. He is joined in this work by his father, a poet and professor who is reduced to moving bodies to make ends meet. This story is bittersweet, but also frequently, improbably hilarious.

“Philadelphia, you big bitch, throw me a bone,” Meredith writes. “It’s June 1998. I’m twenty-two. I’ve bounced from failure at school to crappy job and back for two years. I spend my time outside the house either dragging the local dead around or getting drunk listening to rock and roll before coming chastely home to sleep ten feet down the hall from my parents. I’ve now handled far more dead women than live ones.”

Meredith is clear-eyed and generous in his storytelling, relaying with skill and honesty everything from his first sexual encounter to his family’s inability to communicate. While he creates a powerful sketch of a very specific time and place—a family in crisis in 1990s Philadelphia—this book will ring true to anyone who ever yearned to grow up, only to find that coming of age is more painful and beautiful than they ever imagined.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Amid the 21st-century glut of overindulgent memoirs, The Removers is a poignant, near-perfect addition to the genre. Andrew Meredith writes of growing up in a crumbling Philadelphia neighborhood, his family quietly imploding in the wake of a scandal that cost his father his university job.

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