Alice K's Guide to Life: One Woman's Quest for Survival, Sanity, and the Perfect New Shoes

Caroline Knapp, author of Drinking: A Love Story (an excellent memoir which comes highly recommended by yours truly) used to be an author for the Boston Phoenix where she wrote a column documenting the trials and tribulations of Alice K. (not her real initial). Many of the interesting points that you may have read about in Drinking are captured in a semi-autobiographical, candid and entertaining manner through the lens of Alice K. It also highlights the zeitgeist of the early 1990s, complete with fax machines, gigantic computers, big hair, leggings, and bulky sweaters.

Almost more potent than the story itself, the time capsule back to the '90s brought up a lot of memories and nostalgia for me. I'm old enough to remember days when you had show more to call people on telephones (that were attached to walls), not know who was calling you before you picked up the phone, worry that you might miss somebody (and they don't have an answering machine), and fret about long distance bills. You had to purchase things either in stores or by catalogues (and oh, the delight of perusing catalogues!). The World Wide Web did not yet exist, so forget about e-mail, cellphones, voice mail, text messaging, or any of those other conveniences of modern-day life.

It's also fascinating to read about the economic conditions of the pre dot-com boom, after Reganomics pummled the US into a recession, especially considering that I've weathered so many recessions now, most notably that following the housing crisis of 2007, of which I (and many others) are still dealing with the aftermath to this day. This sense of perspective made the book more interesting than it probably would have been if I'd read it 20 years ago (notwithstanding that I would have been barely a teenager back then).

The notable thing I disliked about this book is how heterocentric and "men are from mars, women are from venus" it is. Of course, it is a product of the times...

Highly recommended if you're a fan of Caroline Knapp, or if you just want to go back to Boston circa 1993. And if you haven't read Drinking: A Love Story yet, make sure you read it after this! show less

Proto-chicklit. Much of the book is a stereotypical description of the least pleasant aspects of heterosexual life and consumer society. There are some excellent reflections near the end on office workers and on male and female desire, but this is a columnist's book, going for the fast mass laugh most of the time.