The Unspeakable: and Other Subjects of Discussion

Daum’s second essay collection is an engaging but uneven follow-up to her acclaimed 2001 debut, My Misspent Youth. “What I was in it for, what I was about, was the fieldwork aspect,” she writes in “The Best Possible Experience,” a lighthearted essay about dating and marriage. Daum brings this anthropological lens to all of her essays, often weaving social critique into personal narrative. In “Difference Maker,” she describes volunteering with the juvenile court system, leading to the revelation that “children who wind up in foster aren’t just in a different neighborhood. They inhabit a world so dark it may as well exist outside of our solar system.” Daum is a smart and candid writer, but the collection’s title promises a kind of deviance that she never quite delivers. “The Joni Mitchell Problem” details her embarrassing love for Joni Mitchell and a dinner they had together; “Honorary Dyke” examines the author’s skin-deep identification with lesbian culture; and “The Dog Exception” makes one wonder whether the world needs any more writing about pets. But in “Matricide,” a frank and affecting account of her mother’s death, Daum proves that she can wrestle with ghosts. “In the history of the world, a whole story has never been told,” she writes. But that shouldn’t stop her from trying. (Nov.)