My Unsentimental Education

This picaresque memoir of a woman with brains and desires (not always operating in unison) is a joy. It tracks a runaway life with consummate control and aphoristic wit. Phillip Lopate Debra Monroe is a terrifically acute observer of the two worlds of women: her mother s generation corseted in sexual and familial constraints; her own, in which lovers and addresses shift with the wind. She is able, in other words, to make just as many mistakes, only different ones. My Unsentimental Education is very funny, not least at Monroe s own expense, and it raises a dozen potent questions about what has changed for a generation of women not so much disillusioned as unillusioned about what it means to live like a man. Rosellen Brown, author of Half a Heart Through a series of near pratfalls and sheer acrobatic strength, Debra Monroe integrates the schisms of taught identity a bumpy, if not bumptious, education shared by many, a charismatic story at once wildly entertaining, buoyant, and wise. Melissa Pritchard, author of PalmerinoCRUX logoThe University of Georgia PressAthens, Georgia 30602www.ugapress.orgISBN 978-0-8203-4874-2"