SCRAPING BY IN THE BIG EIGHTIES

This memoir of a woman's postcollege coming-of-age during the Reagan years is a book with an identity crisis. It tells the story of Singer's 20s: how she moved to Seattle in 1979 full of idealism, then navigated the next decade with increasing disillusion, all the while dealing with her mother's mental illness. Whether Singer is searching for the meaning of life at a Catskills Buddhist monastery or searching for her muse out of a Mexican rat-infested beach hut, her adventurousness is admirable. However, her story falters when she examines her own experiences through a global lens; after describing a devastating panic attack when she's mistaken for a homeless person by a Boston cop, Singer suddenly zooms to the national picture, where Reagan's "Morning in America" re-election campaign is taking the country by storm. The shift from one narrative track to another is frustrating and jarring, and it happens dozens of times. Singer also doesn't explain why she chose Reaganomics as her memoir's leitmotif when she couldn't be bothered to vote ("I forgot. Being in a bad relationship kind of saps the old civic energy, I guess"). This is, first and foremost, the timeless memoir of a daughter fighting her way out of the shadow of her mother's mental illness. Alas, it's mired in the '80s world of bad perms and politics. Agents, Emma Parry and Byrd Stuart Leavell. (Sept. 16)