This is a curious hybrid: it's Gillespie's first-person account, but it also includes short essays by other writers about their experiences with rage and powerlessness. Memoirist Gillespie (All the Wrong Men and One Perfect Boy
) writes as a single mother living in Austin, Tex., a former alcoholic and a woman who has been through the dating mill. She is also the estranged daughter of a furious Irish-American father, and this sense of alienation from her family of origin permeates the book. Although it initially feels like a collection of random portraits of people who have earned Gillespie's ire—men, professional colleagues, faithless friends—as the layers of experience and memories pile up, Gillespie paints an engrossing picture of women's rage, which, she says, often stems from powerlessness and fear. Her honesty about holding grudges is appealing: "I let my hatred for him fester," she confesses of a loathsome ex-boyfriend. Yet in describing her own foolish decisions during the relationship, she allows us to see how she enabled and even encouraged her lover's bad behavior. Every outrageous anecdote has a double-edged perspective that transcends self-pity, and as Gillespie progresses to talking about the nature of forgiveness and her increasingly calmer approach to life, we are rooting for her. (May)
