When she campaigned in Eugene for Sen. Jeff
Merkley, her energy and conviction came across in a
rush unusual in American politics today. In her book,
she plays dress-up with her grandchildren, shares her
love for her Aunt Bee and other family members who
helped her go through law school and into teaching
while raising two children. Her love for the dogs in
her life is a constant. But we finish A Fighting Chance
wondering if Wall Street will allow Elizabeth Warren to
go higher. Born in 1949, her age might limit her. This
book has no insights into her knowledge of foreign
policy. Whatever the next step, after reading this book,
we know there will be one. — Anita Johnson
My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove
j. michaels
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Painter’s Progress: A Portrait
of Lucian Freud by David
Dawson. Knopf, $65.
My Favorite Things by Maira
Kalman. Harper Design, $36.
Encyclopedia of Trouble and
Spaciousness by Rebecca
Solnit. Trinity University Press,
$25.95.
Knausgård. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $16.
Given the choice,
would you agree to follow a
Blue Horses: Poems by Mary
complete stranger through
Oliver. The Penguin Press,
the rambling pathways
$24.95.
of his most intimate
Faithful and Virtuous Night:
memories, as he recalls
Poems by Louise Gluck. Farrar,
his life as thoroughly and
Straus and Giroux. $23. Winner
fearlessly as possible,
of the National Book Award for
though not always in
poetry 2014.
the most linear fashion?
Being Mortal: Medicine and
This might be a loaded
What Matters in the End by
question, but, in essence,
Atul Gawande. Deckle Edge,
Norwegian author Karl
$26.
Ove Knausgård is asking
no less of his reader in his six-volume autobiographical
Lila: A Novel by Marilynne
novel My Struggle (Min Kamp in Norweigan, and yes,
Robinson. Farrar, Straus and
that title is controversial to say the least). The first
Giroux, $26.
book of Knausgård’s grand project — widely heralded
Redeployment by Phil Klay.
as one of the towering literary achievements of this
The Penguin Press HC, $26.95.
century — begins and ends, as do many great novels,
Winner of the 2014 National
with the specter of death. Namely, it is the death of the
Book Award for fiction.
author’s father that so haunts him, as he and his brother
spend hundreds of pages dealing with the aftermath
Prune by Gabrielle Hamilton.
Random House, $45.
of alcoholic demise, cleaning a grotesquely cluttered
house full of decaying food and endless empty bottles.
Mix It Up by Herve Tullet.
Knausgård’s prose meanders along with the
Chronicle Books, $15.99.
ebbs and flows of daily life, sometimes lingering for
interminable passages on the everyday stuff of existence
and occasionally bursting forth in stunning moments of
revelation and reckoning. He flits back and forth through time, forever wrapping the present into
the past and visa versa, and interspersing this with philosophical asides that distill experience
into some sort of meaning, even in its apparent meaninglessness. Like Proust, Knausgård is
obsessed with memory and the obsessive hold it has on us, the way every moment of our life
accrues, often painfully, into this present moment. — Rick Levin
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Not That Kind of Girl: A young woman tells you what
she’s “learned” by Lena Dunham. Random House, $28.
Lena Dunham, even before her memoir, was
a polarizing figure. With the 2012 debut of HBO
show Girls, people either loved her — for candidly
capturing at least a slice of the millennial zeitgeist,
for her goofy narcissism, for her proud feminism
— or they hated her — for that very candor, for
her neuroses, for her privileged bohemian SoHo
upbringing, for her early success or for her casual
nudity. To that I said, “Down with the haters!”
But then the allegations came: Upon the release
of Not That Kind of Girl, critics pointed to passages
that Dunham wrote as evidence that she sexually
abused her younger sister. Knowing that I’d be
reading and reviewing this book, I didn’t want to
have the same fangirl blind spot that many have
for, say, Woody Allen. So I will say this: I’ve read
the book, I’ve read the criticisms and then I read
all the responses from sexual therapists, counselors
and psychologists and their resounding answer is
no, this is not sexual abuse, this is natural, albeit
weird, adolescent exploration. The last thing I will
say about that, because this book has a lot more to offer, is that Dunham may have fared better
if she had composed these passages with less snark and more reflection.
Otherwise, Not That Kind of Girl is delightful. Here Dunham’s voice is original and strong,
her writing more elegant and her insights into the female experience more poignant than on
Girls. Dunham recounts her failures with glee and little vanity, exposing the worst of herself and
others e.g., pondering unruly nipple hair while filming nude scenes, recounting her irresponsible
relationship with prescription drugs or describing a breakup with a conservative college dude
because of his “Phillip-Rothian” disdain for women. Dunham is ever the hilarious narcissist, but
a softness and empathy does shine through, like when she writes, “My bed was a rest stop for
the lonely, and I was the spinster innkeeper.”
If I could go back in time, I’d tell my 18-year-old self to read Not This Kind of Girl and not
to worry so much. — Alex V. Cipolle
e u g e n e w e e k l y . c o m • D e c e m b e r 11 , 2 014
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