Seeing As Your Shoes Are Soon to be on Fire

August 15, 2016
Monroy (The Marriage Act) chronicles her efforts to find lasting love with the (often unsolicited) advice of her opinionated mother, a retired U.S. visa screener referred to as “The Profiler,” who she first wrote about in 2012 in an essay for the Modern Love column in the New York Times. The boyfriend “profiling” goes back as far as Monroy’s teenage years, when her mother had an undesirable suitor deported for drug use. Other unsuccessful relationships involve a Wall Street power broker and a “Robin Williams-esque” free spirit who goes to Burning Man and never comes back. The book’s title is taken from a voicemail left by an ex-boyfriend shortly before he destroys her laptop, guitar, journals, as well as other prized possessions. The most compelling essay, “Somebody’s French Girl,” is an account of a tryst with a semifamous author that provides insight into managing expectations and the layers of experience, how we can construct a vivid romantic narrative around someone when we are merely a “bit player” in their own story. Interspersed are sections titled “A Note from the Desk of the Profiler,” in which Monroy allows her mother to chime in with her side. As the stories are roughly chronological, it is interesting to watch Monroy learn her lessons, to stop romanticizing her partners or assigning them to neat boxes, to assert boundaries and rules, even if they get broken. When she finally gets her happy ending, it feels earned.

A mother's monitoring becomes helpful but overwhelming as the author travels a rockier road than most toward domestic bliss.Though labeled a collection of essays, this book reads more like a memoir and covers some of the same ground as Monroy's previous memoir, The Marriage Act (2014). The author proceeds chronologically and follows the narrative thread of romantic and marital misadventure, but the focus remains mostly on the relationship between Monroy and her mother. The latter, referred to throughout as the "Profiler," has distinguished herself with the State Department for her sharp instincts in dealing with visa applications, and she uses that same intuition in judging--and almost invariably rejecting--her daughter's suitors. "At fourteen, I felt smothered by the intensity of our single mother/only daughter relationship," writes the author, and readers can easily understand, particularly after a teenage boyfriend with whom the daughter has shared drugs runs afoul of authorities because of "a personal mission to get rid of the bad boy who captured her daughter's affections." But as the daughter matures into a writer in her 20s and 30s and the mother continues to overstep, the attempts to cast this as sitcom cuteness begin to seem a little unnerving, particularly as Monroy invites her mother to contribute interludes on what was wrong with her daughter's choices in men and why. The author does seem a little deluded in her choices--e.g., she fell deeply for a vagabond who said things like, "the real art is my life," and "I'm a professional appreciator of moments." This followed her marriages to a gay man, to whom she gave the gift of citizenship, and a second who turned overly controlling, followed by a cohabitant poet who was both a perpetual liar and psychopathically vindictive (inspiring the book's title). Eventually Monroy looked for direction from a reader of tarot cards, making her mother more resentful, before finding belated stability in marriage and motherhood. An uneven collection in which the author shows that it's time to move on from mom. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2016
Monroy, author of the novel Mexican High (2008) and the memoir The Marriage Act (2014), now shares a linear collection of essays about her past loves and relationships. A writing instructor, Monroy peppers her confessional pieces with commentary on the mechanics of writing and the thoughts and words of writers she admires. Her mother, (mostly) lovingly called the Profiler, for her uncanny ability to point out what I least wanted to see in potential mates, thanks to decades spent as a diplomat in the foreign service, features largely. For example, the Profiler has a bad feeling from the get-go about the boyfriend who lets Liza pay for everything, the one who has the personal slogan of Embrace Your Awesome, and the helicopter pilot who first introduces Monroy to the martial art capoeiraa practice that will stick with her far longer than he does. Monroy, who first introduced the Profiler in a New York Times Modern Love column, throws her mistakes and the lessons learned from them like confetti. Readers will celebrate, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)