Sharp

Reviews

“Dunne’s elegant performance adds great value to the insightful text. Her voice is lovely, and she has prepared impeccably, never missing the music in complex sentences and acing the trickiest pronunciations.”

“My platonic ideal nerdapalooza of a book, a study of seminal female writers…The whole is even greater than the sum of its incisive parts.”

“Dean makes the convincing argument that women’s voices―if not necessarily feminist ones―did far more to define the last century’s intellectual life than we realize.”

“The women Dean profiles here were willing to be unpopular. That made them not only sharp, but brave…[Dean] deftly and often elegantly traces these women’s arguments about race, politics and gender.”

“Examines women who battled a sexist industry and a gossipy social scene (which sometimes led to public feuds) as they made their rise as public intellectuals, critics, and artists.”

“Features intertwining depictions of our most important twentieth-century female essayists and cultural critics…A hybrid of biography, literary criticism, and cultural history.”

“Dean’s literary bash is as stimulating and insightful as its roster of guests. She not only encapsulates their biographies and achievements with remarkable concision, but also connects the dots between them.”

“What I like most about Michelle Dean’s book Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion is its cumulative effect. It’s not a biography of one or two or even three brilliant intellectuals, but ten: ten women writers who are variously funny, acerbic, insightful, opinionated, and complex. Together, they make a sisterhood, even though, Dean explains, most would likely balk at that notion.”

“Few readers could fail to be impressed by both the research behind and readability of this first book by Dean…[A] stunning and highly accessible introduction to a group of important writers.”

“Engaging portraits of brilliant minds. A useful take on significant writers ‘in a world that was not eager to hear women’s opinions about anything.’”

“Shrewd, discerning, fresh, and crisply composed interpretations of the temperaments, experiences, and sophisticated trailblazing works of these gutsy and transformative thinkers.”

“Michelle Dean has delivered an exquisite examination—both rigorous and compassionate—of what it has meant to be a woman with a public voice and the power to use it critically. This book is ferociously good.”

“This is such a great idea for a book, and Michelle Dean carries it off, showing us the complexities of her fascinating, extraordinary subjects, in print and out in the world. Dean writes with vigor, depth, knowledge and absorption, and as a result Sharp is a real achievement.”

“An elegant, incisive, and richly detailed account…Sharp is not simply a collection of distinct biographical essays but a vital composite portrait of the intellectual life of twentieth-century America. It’s also a lot more fun to read than a deeply researched study of a group of intellectuals has any business being. A necessary book by a wonderful writer.”

“There can’t be enough cultural histories which make the point that a woman intellectual must represent her own mind and not the collective mind of all her ‘sisters.’ Sharp is a brisk, entertaining, well-researched reminder that it’s impossible to write―or think―without making life very messy for oneself, but to do so is an achievement well worth the pains.”

Expand reviews