In one, West wonders if her resilience in the face of trolling and misogyny is “a masochistic form of vanity-the vestigial allure of a rugged individualism that I don’t even believe in.” In the following chapter, a lyrical portrait of her parents’ marriage of opposites, she wonders if the grit she inherited from her mother and the idealism she got from her father made her “preternaturally suited” for withstanding trolls. Two of the book’s strongest chapters are somewhat awkwardly juxtaposed. An anecdote in which West is assigned by Seattle’s the Stranger to cover a “ Red Tent Temple”-a place, inspired by Anita Diamant’s novel The Red Tent, where women congregate to celebrate their menstrual cycles-is wedged between stories from her childhood, apparently to consolidate the topic of menstrual embarrassment. In a book that falls somewhere between a single narrative and a collection of essays, this can be disorienting. That’s a lot of ground to cover, and Shrill toggles between thematic and chronological modes of organization.
She can eviscerate the status quo with raunchy humor-in her opening chapter, she upends the message girls receive that “periods are the best! and we must never speak of them” by declaring that getting hers felt like watching her vagina “transform into a chocolate fountain (SORRY) and turn my pants into a crime scene once a month.” She can attack entrenched sexism with skilled polemic, as when she argues for why “fat is a feminist issue.” And she can leave both of those modes behind to write poignantly about growing up, losing her father, and falling in love. To see so much of West’s writing in one place is to appreciate her range. Parts of Shrill are new, such as West’s ingenious “complete list of fat female role models available in my youth.” (She includes a defense of Ursula from The Little Mermaid: “History is written by the victors, so forgive me if I don’t trust some P90X sea king’s smear campaign against the radical fatty in the next grotto.”) Parts are familiar, such as a chapter adapted from a powerful Guardian column about her wedding.
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