“These stories are not written for their own sake, but as a way to explain human complexity. The details of her past theft comes out as a means of empathizing with a writer ashamed of the same. Sugar describes her husband’s infidelity to help a fiancée with a stark, black-and-white view of marriage consider nuance. This is the type of meaning-making any personal essayist or memoirist should aim for, of course — and, notably, Strayed is both — but it’s all the more explicit and obvious in an advice column. Strayed’s story is, in its way, a mirror.”
Jessica Gross, reviewing Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things.
Source: themillions.com
