“In a world that wants you to think less—that wants, in fact, to do your thinking for you, Monsters is that rare work, beyond a book, that reminds you of your sentience. It’s wise and bold and full of the kind of gravitas that might even rub off.”

“Part memoir, part treatise, and all treat . . . nimble, witty . . . Her exquisitely reasoned vindication of Lolita brought tears to my eyes . . . This is a book that looks boldly down the cliff of roiling waters below and jumps right in, splashes around playfully, isn’t afraid to get wet. How refreshing.”

“Excellent . . . A work of deep thought and self-scrutiny that honors the impossibility of the book’s mission. Dederer comes to accept her love for the art that has shaped her by facing the monstrous, its potential in herself, and the ways it can exist alongside beauty and pathos. Go ahead, she tells us, love what you love. It excuses no one.”

“Not only one of my favorite feminist books, but one of my favorite books of the last few years, period. . . . Exquisite. . . . So sharp and real and revelatory. . . . I loved it so, so much.”

“The effect is to unleash a dangerously rambunctious writer on the world. … At some point I realized (epiphany!) that the promiscuities of Love and Trouble were rather heroic: a case of stomping down the temptation to tell an easier story and look pretty in the world’s eyes..”

“Poser achieves something rare: It’s a contemporary book about yoga that doesn’t leave you squirming, suspect or bored . . . The illusion of commiseration here is really just a triumph of truth-telling, of a writer having the courage to confront her limits and sit, uncritically, in the messy present. Like a yoga pose, it doesn’t have to be perfect to be exquisite.”

“Dederer’s humor is tangy and precision-aimed; her targets are the sine qua non of memoirs: mothers and marriage. A book reviewer and social critic with bylines in the New York Times, Slate, and Vogue, Dederer acidly deconstructs hip, politically correct Seattle . . . Dederer writes superbly and offers sharp insights into family dynamics as well as hatha yoga’s impact on American life, the focus of a growing number of groundbreaking book.”