Via Liz Miller of Bookslut:

The reason I didn't keep a diary in high school was because I didn't have much interest in writing what other people weren't going to read. My portentous teen angst still found purchase, though, mostly in long letters to friends, melodramatic personal essays for class, and the occasional spurt of Really Bad Poetry. Along the way, writing became my way of attempting to understand the world and what I was supposed to do in it. Writing was necessary, then, because I was a teenager, and I had no fucking clue.

Zoe Trope isn't very sure, either, and her small-press-gone-big memoir makes sure to remind you of that fact every page and a half. Scattered among the feisty recountings of Zoe's daily life are guilt, arrogance, self-loathing, and above all else confusion, the sort of ramblings best scrawled into battered composition notebooks with punk rock stickers on the cover. At times, it's frustrating to read the self-pity of a young woman who has so much going for her, surrounded as she is by friends, books, and the talent she unleashes at poetry readings and contests. When her mother buys her expensive shoes, all I can think about is the last time I could afford Payless. But I keep remembering that I was fifteen too, once, and there is much bad poetry proving that I understand.

To read the rest of the Bookslut review click here.

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