IT TAKES A WORRIED WOMAN

A novelist recalls a difficult past of loss as well as a stormy present.

In this follow-up to her memoir, My Unsentimental Education, Monroe covers some of the same ground: hand-to-mouth living as she launched her writing career, failed relationships, challenges as a White single mother adopting a Black daughter. The author’s wry, straight-talking style keeps this material fresh, and her stories are often wrenching. In one piece, she recalls the abusive men in her mother’s life; in another, her own experience with sexual assault. Circling around these stark topics are more modest but engaging tales about her efforts to sublimate her fears. She recalls spending her 20s attending Weight Watchers meetings, caring less about slimming down than finding the company of older women, and a piece on acquiring babysitters for her young daughter while teaching is an object lesson in being both inventive and bone-tired. The author also shares stories about long-distance relationships, small literary successes, and a search for stability, all of which she relates with gravitas and brass. (“Good lovemaking doesn’t happen right away. People say that. I wouldn’t know. I never waited to find out.”) If aging has bestowed maturity on Monroe, it hasn’t necessarily brought comfort. Essays in the latter third of the book involve her college-age daughter’s experience with racist violence and the way her well-intentioned White friends tried to downplay or ignore it (“You think about race too much. You need to stop”); the casual bigotry of Monroe’s next-door neighbors; and the sense of entrapment that accompanied the pandemic lockdowns. In these final pieces, the author cannily interweaves the stresses of the daily news and the reckless charms of nature. In mistletoe, she finds an apt metaphor for her daily life—a toxic species that, alas, can’t be completely extinguished from her life.

A thoughtful set of essays that unravel the clichés of trauma writing.