Caca Dolce

June 15, 2017
A portrait of the artist as a moody teen."When someone suggested I was cool," writes Martin (Mickey, 2016, etc.) by way of introduction, "I couldn't help but think, What the fuck is your problem?" It's a good organizing question as, at only 30, the author takes a hard look at her youth, chronicling the tumult and hardship that modern American life visits on the young, thanks mostly to the regrettable behavior of grown-ups who are scarcely grown themselves: "Seth and my mom fought a lot. Yelling and stomping around, mostly, but sometimes the fights became physically aggressive, and they would throw things or grab each other or make physical threats." Readers might rightly be flummoxed, in any event, at a book that opens with a confession to having a first sexual experience at the age of 6, courtesy of a terrible slasher/horror film: "I attributed it to Chucky," Martin writes matter-of-factly, "the evil sentient doll." The author recounts a life alternately spent alone in her bedroom, making mix tapes and collages ("I knew I had something to say, but I didn't trust myself to find the right way to say it yet"), and being wistfully, self-doubtfully in love with boys who didn't know she existed. In other words, it's the sort of thing with which any sensitive reader who has suffered through adolescence will feel sympathetic recognition. The story levels off in early adulthood, with still more confusions and failings and clumsy moments: "I mostly wanted to eat Jeppe's burger, because Ian had ordered his with mayonnaise and I hated mayonnaise, but I couldn't pass up the thrill of eating from two men's burgers at the same time." That episode ends on a note of furious discovery that is unexpected but entirely appropriate. Martin seldom goes deep, but the arc of growing self-awareness lends the story both gravity and an odd appeal.

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Starred review from July 1, 2017
Martin's honest writing (Mickey, 2016) exists above the confines of fear and social norms. She'll barf up quart after quart of gourmet pizza to locate a missing tooth. She'll tell readers how it feels when your mother moves in with your biological father's brother. She admits that as a child, she was pressured into having sex with her cousin, and effortlessly conjures the colossal relief that comes with discovering that lying on top of one another fully clothed is not, in fact, sexual intercourse. She is gross, masculine, thrilled by vandalism, and a breath of pure oxygen in a literary environment that often shies away from female grit. Set against her upbringing in dry Clearlake, California, her writing is sweaty, uncomfortable, and enchanting. Her essays follow her chronological coming-of-age, beginning with an elementary-school-age sexual arousal to a viewing of Child's Play, and ending with her young-adult decision to cut her father out of her life. She taps into the consciousness of her past selves with precision and care, respecting the integrity and desires of those younger women. A sure hit for fans of Sara Benincasa's Agorafabulous! (2012) and Lena Dunham's Not That Kind of Girl (2014).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)