Since Debra Monroe’s new memoir, My Unsentimental Education (University of Georgia Press Hardcover; October 1, 2015, $24.95), debuted less than two weeks ago, stellar reviews have been pouring in. Sara Nelson, the Editor of Omnivoracious.com, suggests why Ms. Monroe’s memoir is so appealing:
“Nothing wrong with a good celebrity memoir – say, Chrissie Hynde, Elvis Costello, or Drew Barrymore. But sometimes it’s the so-called ordinary people who have the most interesting stories…My Unsentimental Education “reads like a country ballad,” one reviewer said – but I’d say it’s even better than that. (And I love country ballads.) I first came across Debra Monroe when she was pitching ideas to a magazine at which I worked – and then, as now, her voice was perfect: earthy and self-deprecating and funny and world weary – but not cute, or thank your greater power, not plucky, exactly, either. You know how some children just seem born into the wrong family? That’s Monroe, except that Monroe was also born in the wrong place and station.”
Debra Monroe is an outspoken advocate for the memoir of discovery (not recovery), and she writes compellingly about the new wave in memoir nonfiction in a recent article for Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/memoir-discovery-not-recovery/#continue_reading_post
This new trend in memoirs is resonating strongly with reviewers, and MY UNSENTIMENTAL EDUCATION is receiving rave reviews:
“While this book is engaging as an account of its author’s intellectual and occupational awakening as well as her adventures — or misadventures, really — in sex and relationships, it is above all a love story, but with poetry and fiction more than with any person, and that’s what makes it a pleasure to read.” —Chicago Tribune
“Blunt and salty, Debra Monroe’s new memoir traces the jagged line of her improbable trajectory: from a blue-collar girl in Spooner, Wis., to a professor in Texas State University’s Master of Fine Arts program…Monroe has written the sort of memoir she herself likes to read, built around the ordinary dramas of adolescence, dating and work.” —Houston Chronicle
“In its overarching trajectory, it’s a story of a woman determined to chart her own course through a maze of confinement. It dances through themes of domesticity, feminism and burgeoning sexuality. It risks becoming a story about the female rise to selfhood, which it is. But it’s also decidedly unique, distinct from the I-Made-It-Despite-the-Odds navel-gazing of many personal tales.The book is a map of Monroe’s road out and up, but also a testament to the distinctive voice she’s honed in the process.” —Dallas Morning News
“Monroe establishes the friction between two selves pulling in opposite directions through the blunt, no-nonsense style of her first memoir, “On the Outskirts of Normal.” With unwavering honesty and flashes of sly humor, she describes how, while the Spooner left hand continues to launch her toward Mr. Wrong and domestic drudgery, the right hand clings to the life raft of academic advancement with a steady, iron grip.”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution
“Monroe does not glamorize one moment of her early years with constant financial worries and juggling of complicated relationships with college and graduate school work that her father warned her would ‘educate her out of the marriage market.’…a rich literary life that sings from the pages of this book.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“She recounts her failed relationships with wit and candor in “My Unsentimental Education,” also offering forgiveness along the way.” —Wisconsin State Journal
Eager to learn more? You can read a great excerpt from MY UNSENTIMENTAL EDUCATION on Longreads.com.
