Fairyland
by Alysia Abbott (Norton, $26)
“Long before Heather had two mommies, Alysia had one daddy,” said Laura Collins-Hughes in The Boston Globe. First-time author Alysia Abbott was brought up in ’70s San Francisco by a gay, widowed father, and her memoir “occasionally feels like an act of atonement” for the callousness she showed when her imperfect dad later contracted AIDS. But though “we are deep, deep into the book by the time it finally ignites,” Fairyland offers a valuable glimpse of our culture at a moment of transition.
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Bootstrapper
by Mardi Jo Link (Knopf, $25)
Mardi Jo Link’s memoir mostly just strings together “a series of hokey anecdotes” about her first year as a single mother trying to operate a small Michigan farm, said Amanda Fortini in The New York Times. But though Link’s ex-husband and even her young sons feel “hazily sketched,” Link’s resourcefulness proves impressive, and her “raw, willful energy” throws off sparks. She’s built a life that’s less a pastoral idyll than “barely controlled chaos,” but it feels authentic.
It’s Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat It
by Bill Heavey (Atlantic Monthly, $25)
Bill Heavey is “nothing if not honest,” said Catherine Ramsdell in PopMatters.com. The veteran Field and Stream contributor admits in this memoir about feeding himself with only what he can grow, forage, or kill himself that he’s not a picky eater and once messily murdered a squirrel with a garden hoe. But if he sometimes buries his larger points in colorful anecdotes and “beautifully snarky humor,” he’s at least delivered a good read, the kind filled with bits you instantly want to share aloud.
Walden on Wheels
by Ken Ilgunas (New Harvest, $16)
Ken Ilgunas gives me new hope about America’s next generation, said Daniel Akst in The Wall Street Journal. Saddled with college debt, the young graduate took menial work to quickly pay off a $32,000 loan, then earned a master’s at Duke while living out of a Ford van to avoid further debt. His “thoroughly endearing” account of the whole adventure takes factual liberties that could have been avoided, but the Ilgunas we meet here is still fueled by surprising idealism.
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