Jennifer Close has a reputation for having nailed the whole young-woman's-coming-of-age thing in her first novel, Girls in White Dresses. And that, with the image of a young woman on the cover messing with the belt of her dress, brought Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep to my mind. Doubleday - Random
As the second of four stories in Finale, published at the end of Dear Life as "not quite stories", "Night" is part of a "separate unit, one that is autobiographical in feeling, though not, sometimes, entirely so in fact". Random House, 2012 "I believe they are the first
“Number One, satire is not on. Critics love it, real people turn it off." That from the satirical novel Easy to Like*, which takes on Canadian media just as Linda Svendsen takes on Canadian politics in Sussex Drive. Of course, Edward Riche was satirizing the idea of satire
Little Brown & Company, 2012 Growing Up Brave begins with the author arriving to deliver a talk a couple of years ago, shocked that the modest attendance she had expected was a crowd of 700 people in a high school auditorium. The audience was comprised of parents, caregivers, guidance
A remarkable rise in children's emotional and behavioural problems? 2011; W.W. Norton & Company, 2012 A striking upsurge in the diagnoses of ADHD, childhood depression and bipolar disorder, autism? A significant increase in the number of children taking psychiatric medications? It's a mental health epidemic. Or, not. What
