From Literary Mama’s Now Reading: June 2015
Severe anxiety and agoraphobia shouldn’t be this funny, but I found myself laughing out loud every time I cracked open Sara Benincasa’s Agorafabulous: Dispatches from My Bedroom.
Sara takes us to so many different places—to her tiny apartment in Boston, to a spaced-out spiritual retreat in rural Pennsylvania, to a high school deep in the heart of Texas—and yet, our host for all this traveling is a woman who, for much of the opening essay, is not able to leave her own room. This essay collection merged two things I look for most in creative nonfiction, humor and humility. Sara never takes her own struggles too seriously, but she is wise enough to know that the stuff she’s dealing with is very real, and not just for her—for a lot of people.
The best part is the prose. Sara is a born storyteller, and her pacing and comedic timing makes this a collection I will happily come back to again and again.
rae pagliarulo 