Telling

Winik, a poet, syndicated columnist for the Austin Chronicle and contributor to NPR's All Things Considered , mines her life for the material of these wry, memorable essays. A ``born iconoclast'' turned ``middle-income thirtysomething'' wife-and-mother-of-two in Texas, Winik has much to say about the sneaky, sometimes painful process of growing up. She writes in conversational style about her father, her adolescent anxieties in suburban New Jersey, meeting her husband and the vagaries of nursing children. Winik has a gift for aphorism--sleepaway camp ``was just a front for humiliation of the uncoordinated''--but other essays make clear that there is hard-won wisdom behind her wit, especially those heartfelt writings on the friends damaged by the reckless past they all shared: a sister finally recovering from drug addiction, a friend dying of AIDS. First serial to Utne Reader; author tour. (Feb.)