Mumbai New York Scranton: A Memoir
On a trip to India with her husband, Jason Fulford (the book’s photographer), well-known cook and New York Times illustrator Shopsin contracts what she believes to be a terrible case of food poisoning. But she soldiers on through the rest of trip, touring villages and odd museums, like a garden made entirely out of thread. Back in New York, her illness doesn’t go away, and she struggles to discover what’s going on. Her diagnosis is blindsiding, and she masterfully evokes that same feeling of surprise for the reader. Despite the dire circumstances, Shopsin’s dry, staccato sentences are very funny: “Dr. Schorr comes in. He looks so much like Sigmund Freud it has to be on purpose.” Her irreverent illustrations and pithy, whimsical writing complement each other perfectly as Shopsin recounts details that, though not providing a lot of emotional depth on their own, together limn a creative, playful, wry and resourceful woman in a crisis. Shopsin’s compelling and unconventional memoir is terrifying until you realize that, since she’s writing about it, there has to be a happy ending. --Sarah Hunter