A ferocious defense of a generation of women against the forces that made them.
Critical reflection from deep in the trenches of pop culture.
The touch points for Bolin’s essay collection are not the usual suspects of recent pop culture analysis—neither billboard stars nor social media tropes of the 2020s are under the microscope here. Instead, she looks slightly backward, to the steady diet of MTV video countdowns, reality television, glossy magazines, and meandering trips to the mall, that shaped—and still hold a strong, nostalgic grip on—millennial women. In a style shared by many of her contemporaries, Bolin self-consciously burrows into and through her own restlessness, disappointment, and wary curiosity to form a reflective analysis of topics from fitness trackers to Nintendo’s Animal Crossing. For those not fluent in her cultural material, the author’s personal investment bolsters the sincerity of her inquiry and the applicability of her hypothesis. The predicament into which corporate executives have pushed us, Bolin suggests, is as problematic as a cult, and our wistful loyalty to the individuals and narratives they have sold draws women into their own oppression. Bolin is determined to exhume what makes these cultural influences both so compelling and so problematic, and her exhaustive probing sometimes becomes fumbling or overdrawn. But, repeatedly, she stops just short of full-blown rant to press quote-worthy, crystalline passages of chilling clarity into the reader’s palm about how the ambitions of patriarchy and capitalism dovetail and how their impact has watered down the promises of feminism for a generation. (Essays on the NXIVM cult and on the teen magazine industry of the late 1990s and early 2000s are particularly, disturbingly excellent.) If power comes from clear-eyed, uncompromising knowledge, Bolin’s text is a tool for the takedown of more current trends of consumerism, oppression, and the new technology that fuels them.
A ferocious defense of a generation of women against the forces that made them.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780063440524
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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