Author: evanbrechtel

Though I devour Jonathan Safran Foer’s work, none of the works after his first novel Everything is Illuminated have quite thrilled me as much as his debut. Here I Am, however, has come extremely close. It has everything I love about Foer: his eccentricity, his willingness to let the reader dangle in discomfort, his ability to characterize entire ideologies and generations as though they were people, while just as nimbly achieving the reverse.

I was on a flight from London to New York and this bio of my favorite icon made the nine hours fly by. Clarke relays a legendary career defined by constant falls and stratospheric comebacks and he does it without giving the reader whiplash. This look at Judy is unflinching, often unflattering, and doesn’t attempt to deify her, which ended up endearing her to me even more.