Volume 45, Number 14 · September 24, 1998
Small Expectations
By Sarah Kerr
Man or Mango?: A Lament
by Lucy Ellmann
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 240 pp., $22.00
Lucy Ellmann is a frustrating writer. Her prose style can be annoying, since it's the written equivalent of a high-pitched whine by someone in love with her own misery. At times, her showy despair calls to mind a child in art class, drawing apocalyptic horrors that send the teacher running for help. She has a strong comic flair, though, and the courage to write exactly as she pleases. For example: it's not every day that someone weaves a novel around a frumpy woman, drained of hope, with neither friends nor the least hint of drama in her life, and few feelings left beyond a dull sexual hunger. Yet such women obviously exist, and deserve their day in fiction. And fiction is a stronger art for exploring them.
Review, 1626 words
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