Girls Like Us

Weller's cultural history of the titans of women in rock in the 1970s details the artistic, sexual and symbolic twists and turns of Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon in careful, loving detail. Susan Ericksen reads like one of the girls, picking up from Weller's tone and sounding like a woman of the era, besotted with the music and with the sense of boundaries being broken and glass ceilings smashed. While Ericksen occasionally slips, pronouncing words incorrectly and stumbling over unwieldy sentences, her performance is, for the most part, very solid. Weller's book is ambitious and wide-ranging, but Ericksen keeps its story tight and engaging. An Atria hardcover (reviewed online). (May)