Bookshistory, making even tertiary ones—
a Pilates instructor, a CVS clerk,
a world-weary coroner—come fan-
tastically alive, sometimes in just
a single line. New Orleans, too, is its
own protagonist: a place of sticky
booze and Spanish moss and end-
less, swampy heat that also knows
its own clichés, inside and out.
There’s hardly a sentence in
Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here
that feels like anything you’ve read
before; that’s how fresh his voice
is, and how willfully, wonderfully
bizarre the book’s plot. Lillian
is a scholarship kid at a Tennessee
boarding school who improbably
finds a best friend in Madison,
a feral beauty with piles of family
money and the morals to match.
Still somehow pen pals years later
despite a terrible betrayal, they’re
reunited when Madison, now the
young wife of a silver-haired sena-
tor, asks for a favor: Would Lillian
like to play governess to her two
stepchildren? They’re great kids!
The thing is, they kind of catch
on fire. When they’re mad, when
they’re agitated, when they’re
overwhelmed, it just happens—
spontaneous combustion. Which
is a health hazard, yeah, but also bad
for business when you’re a public
figure hoping for even higher office.
Wilson (The Family Fang)
unfurls all this from Lillian’s point
of view: witty, confiding, breezily
profane. And tender, too; raised
by a spectacularly indifferent single
mother (“It seemed like maybe
some Greek god has assumed the
form of a stallion and impregnated
her before returning to his home
atop Mount Olympus. More likely
it was just a pervert in one of the
fancy homes my mom cleaned”),
she hardly knows how to recognize
her own maternal instincts when
these two awkward, terrified “fire
children” suddenly become hers to
care for. That the supernatural
elements of Nothing feel so right is
a testament to Wilson’s innate skill
as a storyteller. But it’s the human-
ity in his words, and in All This, that
stays: the unmistakable tenor of
real life, too ludicrous not to be true.
All This Could Be Yours A–
Nothing to See Here A–
MemoirRevıewsMe Wild Game In the Dream
HouseIF YOU RECENTLY SAW
Rocketman and
think you can put off
reading Elton John's
memoir, we implore
you: Do not wait a
long, long time. Me is
a laugh-till-you-cry
hilarious and heartfelt
page-turner. John
chronicles his meteoric
rise—every tantrum,
triumph, and tragedy—
with an achingly
painful self-awareness.
The confessed gossip
also shares oodles
of left-field anecdotes
(sabotaging Rod
Stewart’s blimp! Stevie
Wonder piloting a
snowmobile!) that will
leave you gasping for
air. For serious music
fans, the earnest,
damaged “music mad”
kid at the heart of
Me will stick with you. A
—Sarah RodmanADRIENNE BRODEUR
can construct a scene
with the best of them.
Her debut memoir,
a smart if unsubtle
chronicle of devastat-
ing family secrets,
opens on Adrienne at
14, summering at her
family’s cozy Cape Cod
beach house. Over
the course of a bougie
dinner party, she feasts
on squab, endures
an unsettling first sex-
ual encounter, and
takes on an enormous
emotional burden: Her
mother tells her she’s
embarking on an affair—
with her husband’s
best friend. Adrienne is
tasked to maintain
the deception as she
comes of age, anchor-
ing a memoir that richly
explores a complex
mother-daughter bond.
B+ —David CanfieldIF THERE ARE NO NEW
stories, only new
ways to tell them,
Carmen Maria Machado
has found a way to
do exactly that, inge-
niously, in Dream
House—a book that
manages to break
open nearly everything
we think we know
about abuse memoirs.
Each brief chapter is
refracted through the
prism of familiar pop
culture touchstones:
bad romance as soap
opera, as stoner com-
edy, as déjà vu. In her
quest to make sense of
a lover who turns on
her, Machado ricochets
from queer-theory
footnotes to Finding
Nemo; the result is a
gorgeously kaleido-
scopic feat—not just of
literature but of pure,
uncut humanity. A —LGAUTHOR
Elton John
PAGES
384AUTHOR
Adrienne Brodeur
PAGES
234AUTHOR
Carmen Maria Machado
PAGES
247