Wayne Thiebaud, Supine Woman, 1963
(September 4) This was recommended by Busy Philipps, whose Instagram I enjoy following; when I looked it up on the library system there was an impressive waiting list for it, which surprised me, since I’d never heard of her till then, and meanwhile this was her second book, her first was a best-seller, apparently she’s been a well-known funny woman for some time. And she’s Canadian! *head-scratch-emoji*
The book is a pleasant read… it’s a collection of short stories, memoir-fashion… it was not laugh-out-loud funny to me, and only occasionally did I heh-heh, but there was a lot of “inner smiling” and wry grins and enjoyment of the point of view. I looked forward to reading it in between bouts, but I didn’t steal time from other activities to read it. A classic 3 stars!
I debated that, though, because of the wonky ending. Following a series of mildly entertaining stories about her early and current life, Oxford suddenly launches into a diatribe against Donald Trump’s sexism… purely understandable in terms of the window of time in which she wrote it (well before he got elected)... but kind of lacking in impact once her book comes out and he’s already been elected. Everyone’s written the same diatribe. It made for an out-of-tune book ending.
This work also may be suffering a bit from second-book syndrome, the collecting of all the left-over bits that never made it into the debut best-seller, thrown quickly together to fulfill a contract. If this was Oxford’s B material, though, her A material, Everything’s Perfect When You’re a Liar, must be pretty good.
The artwork above was suggested by Oxford’s own Instagram -- she has a print of this in her house. It seemed like the right illustration, even though her fashion vibe is totally different.
No comments:
Post a Comment