An excellent collection of the works of the late Marjorie Williams, lovingly curated by her husband, Tim Noah. Williams was a favorite commentator of mine in the late 90's and I was deeply saddened by news of her death in 2005 at the age of 46. I bought this not long after it came out after hearing an NPR interview with Noah. It has been sitting on my shelf since, and I had all but given up on reading it since I thought the majority of the book would be so dated. I was wrong.

Noah has split the book into three parts, profiles of DC power-brokers, columns on politics, parenting, and other matters, and Williams short and utterly perfect memoir of dying in what should have been the middle of her life and leaving behind a family that desperately needed her. I read this book over the course of 9 months, dipping in and out, and leaving it on the shelf for weeks at a time. I think it is the right way to read it. The political profiles and columns are mostly excellent, but simply not intended to be read one after the next. For me at least, the shortest part of the book by far, the cancer memoir, was a single evening's read. I could not pull myself away and it affected me deeply. It is important reading not only for those facing illness, but those who have or will walk that road with someone else. I learned a lot from Williams' frankness. This is subject matter that will never go out of date. The other parts though, also proved timely.

Just as the sexual assault allegations arose against the latest addition to the Supreme Court I was coincidentally reading the columns in this book that focused on the Clarence Thomas hearings. I am old enough to clearly remember those hearings, I was a young lawyer by that time and I was obsessed, but time changes the way we think about these things. These columns were like the Trump ice bucket challenge (except not funny and no one benefits.) It was shocking to see Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch once again celebrate sexual misconduct with no movement forward. In fact this iteration was possibly more blatantly misogynist, than 1991. Amazing. As Stormy Daniels elbowed her way into the awareness of Americans I was reading a piece where Williams railed about American feminists giving Bill Clinton a pass as evidence of his serial sexual misconduct piled up. Some of those same feminists have shouted about DJT's grab em by the pussy mentality, but gave a pass to a President (hell any supervisor) who got blow jobs from his 22 year old intern with his wife and daughter essentially down the hall. (I include myself in this group of feminists, and I feel chastened.) A few weeks later when Hillary said Bill's blowjobs were not an abuse of power (they were) these columns written in the 90's still hit hard. There are other examples of the how timely these pieces proved to be, but these spring to mind.

This was close to a 5-star for me, but the second section -- the columns -- included a little chunk of stuff (mostly from Slate) not up to the caliber of the rest of the book and it pulled it down a little. Let's say 4.25 and leave it at that. Recommended for those interested in seeing how modern history repeats itself, and how a smart and able commentator can help us understand the world better and to those who just appreciate freaking great writing. ( )

The writing in this book is 5-star and literary. You can read more about the book in other places, that the author died of cancer and this book was published later, a sampling of her wise and elegant writings.

I found it a little hard to get excited about this book when I started reading, and I don't know why. I skipped a story here and there, scanned some, and read some with relish. Soon I settled in and read. The book is divided into Profiles, Essays, and personal writings of the author's life and cancer. Once I reached essays and the personal section, I wanted to go back and read every word she wrote. The stories about famous people of DC are astonishing in details we never knew, and oh so humanizing. I was struck by how many intimate interviews, dinners, and gatherings Marjorie must have attended and by her intelligent observations. Her personal observations were no less beautiful and honest. The reader will learn tidbits about people like Barbara Bush that would never have been written about were it not for Marjorie. Unless the reader is part of the Washington DC scene or perhaps a journalist, he will learn about other characters that are virtually unknown outside DC.

The book won a Penn/Martha Albrand Nonfiction Award. It's for intelligent readers, not for readers who relish dime-a-dozen romance novels and the like. Mature readers will enjoy it more than very young readers because it has a level of sophistication and history about it that the average young reader won't appreciate. However, young readers interested in literary works, the political scene, and journalism may enjoy it. I love books that send me to the dictionary and this one did.

Marjorie's death is a great loss to all who read her columns and articles and to all who may discover her later through this book. ( )

I have very mixed feelings about this book. The first part is a badly dated collection of portraits of political figures from the 90's. Marjorie Williams understood that Washington really is like a Jane Austen novel; a small place filled with hierarchical manoeverings, fierce emotions hidden beneath enforced conformity, etc, and no one was safe from her pen. Unfortunately she offers more snark than insight in her writings (though her viscious take-down of Barbara Bush and her trenchant observations of the Gore/Clinton "marriage" both caused quite a stir when they first came out and are still worth reading today). I strongly disagree with her husband's view that "The Alchemist", left unpublished at her death, is her best work in this vein; to my mind this unsparing flogging of her mother shows Marjorie at her worst; a pitiless lack of compassion and terrible writing "I chose my father's sun rather than my mother's moon" that should have been left in a drawer where it was found.
The second part of the book, her unfinished cancer memoir "Struck by Lightning", however, is brilliant. Living with cancer and raising small children just meant that you needed to eat more pancakes, she writes, and so she does, describing the details of her cancer treatments and life with her family. "The Halloween of my Dreams", the last thing she published, is a look-death-in-the-eye coming to terms that she will not live to see her children grow up. I confess I cried when I read it, and it is still something I occasionally take down and re-read today. ( )

Williams was a very good writer, incisive and aware. I was less enamored of her personality analyses of staffers from defunct administrations but entirely riveted by her brutally honest account of her struggle with lethal liver cancer. The agony of contemplating one's own death when one's children are still very young is recorded here in searing words of fire tempered by the grace and wit she ultimately brought to bear on her life. ( )

I have very mixed feelings about this book. The first part is a badly dated collection of portraits of political figures from the 90's. Marjorie Williams understood that Washington really is like a Jane Austen novel; a small place filled with hierarchical manoeverings, fierce emotions hidden beneath enforced conformity, etc, and no one was safe from her pen. Unfortunately she offers more snark than insight in her writings (though her viscious take-down of Barbara Bush and her trenchant observations of the Gore/Clinton "marriage" both caused quite a stir when they first came out and are still worth reading today). I strongly disagree with her husband's view that "The Alchemist", left unpublished at her death, is her best work in this vein; to my mind this unsparing flogging of her mother shows Marjorie at her worst; a pitiless lack of compassion and terrible writing "I chose my father's sun rather than my mother's moon" that should have been left in a drawer where it was found.The second part of the book, her unfinished cancer memoir "Struck by Lightning", however, is brilliant. Living with cancer and raising small children just meant that you needed to eat more pancakes, she writes, and so she does, describing the details of her cancer treatments and life with her family. "The Halloween of my Dreams", the last thing she published, is a look-death-in-the-eye coming to terms that she will not live to see her children grow up. I confess I cried when I read it, and it is still something I occasionally take down and re-read today. ( )