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Bottom of the pile
22
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
1/100Critics
44/100Scholars
Author:
Elizabeth Tallent
Publisher:
Harper
Date:
February 25, 2020
A Stanford University creative writing professor unpacks her lifelong obsession with being perfect, a preoccupation she traces to her infancy and her mother's own neuroses.
What The Reviewers Say
... approaches the mysteries, gaps and obstacles in Tallent’s own story with the same psychological precision and elliptical motivation she applies to her fictional characters.
...a fascinating, busy document. The sentences are worked and reworked, twisted into wires and drawn through multiple clauses. Straightforward memories alternate with meditations on family dynamics and quotes from psychologists and social scientists. Tallent, who takes pass after pass at her elusive subject, evokes a fisherman in a fairy tale, repeatedly casting his rod. There is something compulsive at work here, and a pathos that rises from the simultaneous breadth and modesty of the author’s yearning. Tallent wants nothing less than perfection, because nothing less will make her safe.
... chaotic, tumbling, and beautiful prose.
Many writers suffer from the paralyzing spell of perfectionism, the terror of publishing and its revelation of the author’s shortcomings, which is why this book’s premise was so alluring. However, Tallent only scratches the surface of this predicament; it seems that she does not so much overcome her perfectionism as she is distracted from it.
