At Slate Judith Shulevitz reviews Maile Meloy’s Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.
Meloy’s grasp of our civic abdication is clear-sighted, large-hearted, and desperately necessary. Her pity flows most abundantly for its victims. This is an understandable sentiment but also, at times, a literary liability. Meloy feels such anguish for the innocent that she cleaves to them almost too closely. There is a superabundance here of the child’s point of view.