Jeff Giles

''Nobody ever writes memoirs about the upside of having crappy parents. One of the subtexts of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, though, is that if her folks hadn't been so out of it — her father's alcoholism spreading to her mother like a virus — they would have noticed that their daughter was consumed by metaphysical thoughts and hallucinogenic visions.''

''If you had to criticize one thing about Lorrie Moore — and I don't know why you would, because she's awesome — it might be that her humor and her world-weary sense of the absurd are almost too distinctive.''

Dylan Farrow's open letter in ''The New York Times'' about her father's alleged sexual abuse has reawakened a tragic family drama; how can we make sense of a conflict with so much pain and so few answers?

Sarah Churchwell's Careless People concerns the writing of The Great Gatsby and the cultural and societal forces that inspired its superdrunk author.