“Women today have been told that they can ‘have it all,’ but novelist and essayist Romm presents a collection of essays that reveals that the reality is much more complex. . . .Raw, frank, and utterly relatable, this collection is a must-read.”
—Kristine Huntley, Booklist starred review
“Illuminating . . . . While not an advice book in the traditional form, the experiences recounted and lessons learned seep as if by osmosis, and Romm’s thoughtful aggregation has provided a diversity of voices.”<
—Publishers Weekly
“Incisive, sometimes visceral . . . . revealing a sweeping range of responses including rage, distaste, resilience, courage, and hard-won (and perhaps still vulnerable) triumph. This book is certain to provoke reflection and discussion.”
—Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Library Journal
“It is extraordinarily difficult even for highly accomplished women to utter the simple sentence, ‘I am ambitious’ -- for so many reasons! But instead of dissecting the psychology, sociology, history, and politics behind that ambivalence, Robin Romm opts for stories. Wonderful, readable stories that are as complex and compelling as their authors. Double Bind raises as many questions as it provides answers, but they are questions that women and men with wives, sisters, and daughters should be pondering."
—Anne Marie Slaughter, author of Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family
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The Mercy Papers, a memoir of three weeks
“Full disclosure: I may have a little crush on Romm. Not because she’s a good writer, although her prose (both here and in The Mother Garden, her debut story collection…) ...is so fresh and uncompromising it can feel practically impertinent. Nor because of her wit, although she can be startlingly funny...Not even because of her fearless, scathing honesty, like a gauntlet thrown down on page after page. It’s ultimately her anger that is so magnetic...In Romm’s hands, anger becomes an instrument for pursuing truth, an extremely effective crowbar with which to pry back nicety and expose ‘something unfettered, something darker.’”
—Leah Hager Cohen,
New York Times Book Review (Front Cover)
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“Despite their confident, straightforward prose and their crystalline surface gloss, which recall Ann Beattie's early slice-of-life stories, Romm's narratives -- call them slice-of-death -- turn out to revel in ambiguities and even a gentle magic....But Romm is a close-up magician, more intimate and less instinctively fabulist, and most of her work leaves room for rational interpretation. No magic here, Romm seems to insist. But of course there is, and it's the oldest kind we know: the ordinary incantation of words and stories to help us navigate the darkness and finally -- for all that this impressive collection protests otherwise -- to hold the end at bay."
—Gregory Cowles,
New York Times Book Review
The Mother Garden, stories
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