Junod’s memoir blends intimate family memoir with journalistic investigation. A celebrated magazine writer known for profiles like his Esquire piece on Mr. Rogers, he turns his skills inward to reckon with his larger-than-life father, Lou----a WWII veteran, handbag salesman, and charismatic philanderer who embodied a midcentury ideal of swaggering masculinity reminiscent of Don Draper. The book excels in its sensory prose, emotional honesty, and revelations about family secrets, including...

Her memoir that strips away the gloss of celebrity. Instead it reveals the raw, often grueling reality of her life. She directs the reader through the highs of her storied career and the lows of her health battles. The narrative serves as a vulnerable meditation on resilience and the complex process of mourning the person you used to be. Her voice is conversational yet brutally honest, making the reader feel like a confidant during her most private moments of struggle and self-discovery. A...

The novel follows Tom Layward, a law professor in his fifties living in New York, whose wife Amy had an affair years earlier. He vowed to leave her once their youngest child left home, and when that moment finally arrives, he drives his daughter to college in Pittsburgh and simply keeps going west, embarking on an unplanned cross-country road trip that carries him through encounters with old friends, an ex-lover, his brother, and his son. It seemed to me to be a meditation on family love and...