Cool For You
"With the audacity of Henry Miller, without the protection of his bravado, Myles lets the voice of poverty-madness-shame speak through her and proves the past is never operable." --Cris Kraus, The NationCool for You is touching, funny, and original, featuring strange, beautiful images of the ordinary world. Myles once said of Henry Miller that he `razzes life from within,' and the same can be said of her. --Mary GaitskillMyles transforms a slew of autobiographical material into a narrative that is as bleak as it is redemptive. Each page is imbued with the kind of tone that you want to hear when you pick up the phone late at night and it's a friend calling to catch up. Dark, hip, astonishingly bright. I cannot recommend it enough. --Tom Padilla, Posman Books (Booksense Pick recommendation)Myles's conversational, self-referential style recalls Lynne Tillman and Lydia Davis, who have also broken up narrative to uncover the pools of waiting, repetition and introversion in women's lives. Myles's working-class lesbian perspective links her to Dorothy Allison, Pat Califia and Leslie Feinberg. And her protagonist's journey through hospitals and other institutions calls to mind Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son. [But]Cool for You is original in ways that are not shocking but subtle. Myles has an exquisite sense of the borderline, where people hide or are transformed according to luck and will...Most important, though, is her understanding of more abstract institutions, especially the family. She exposes the most painful moments of an average, sad youth, including a heartbreaking scene in which her mother finds her in bed with a boyfriend, and a vertiginous description of watching her alcoholic father die on the couch. Her portraits are unrelenting but kind, well served by undramatically rich writing that roams but always gets to the point. --Ann Powers, New York Times Book ReviewOne of the savviest voices and most restless intellects in contemporary lit. --Dennis Cooper, Artforum