Girlish

March 15, 2018
My family has never been good at fitting into boxes, Lillibridge writes in her closely observed memoir of growing up with two mothers, her birth mother and her mother's partner, who calls herself stepmother. If this were a fairy tale, the stepmother would be the evil one, and, in fact, she is, in real life, a termagant, whose quarrelsome condition is diagnosed first as clinical depression and then as bipolar disorder. As for herself, Lillibridge is often sad, filled with self-loathing, and desperate to be like everyone else, emotions that are explored, though at arm's length, for Lillibridge's story is not told in first person nor does she ever use her name, referring to herself throughout simply as Girl. This lends an almost clinical air to the story, which, Lillibridge writes, is not the one everyone wants her to tell: I don't want to talk about having two moms because I am overshadowed by it, and, besides, she concludes, I want to be the most interesting character in my own story. And so she is.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)