★ 07/18/2016
Pop-culture commentator Doyle launches a ruthlessly funny, smart, and relentlessly on-point takedown of modern misogyny in this feminist anatomy of celebrity “trainwrecks” and the “appetite for specifically female ruin and suffering” that fuels entire venues of popular entertainment. Contemplating her subjects’ crimes (having sex, having needs, having opinions) and her subjects’ options (self-destruct, disappear, or risk the continual public fury to which a woman who refuses to be shamed, silenced, or stopped is exposed), Doyle compiles portraits including those of historical figures such as Charlotte Brontë and midcentury icons such as Billie Holiday and Sylvia Plath to such contemporary subjects of spectacle as Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, and Britney Spears. She surmises that the train wreck earns hatred for violating the rules of “good” behavior. But in her profiles of non-self-immolating women such as Harriet Jacobs, Hillary Clinton, and the French revolutionary Theroigne de Mericourt, Doyle suggests that the revulsion is stirred not by the train wreck’s questionable behavior but by the fact of her being a visible, vocal female. Doyle’s book is really an exposé of persistent cultural pathologies about women and sex, a “200-year-old problem” of enforcing myths about good behavior that essentially prevent women from being the subjects of their own lives. With compassion for its subjects and a vibrantly satirical tone, Doyle’s debut book places her on the A-list of contemporary feminist writers. (Sept.)
Smart ... compelling ... persuasive ... Doyle reminds us that we shouldn't be so quick to judge women in terms of degrading stereotypes or unrealistic expectations.” —New York Times Book Review
“Fantastic … Trainwreck will very likely join the feminist canon.” —The Atlantic
“Fiercely brilliant, must-read ... Doyle has dug deeply into the garbage that the media peddles about women...Doyle's book moves the needle.” —Elle
“Provocative, persuasive.” —Vogue
“To miss Trainwreck would be a mistake … Brilliantly snarky and smart, Trainwreck deserves a place on every savvy woman's bookshelf.” —Bust Magazine
“A deeply researched account of our culture’s misogynistic obsession with trainwrecks … A convincing, compulsively readable polemic, Trainwreck hinges on the argument that normalizing hatred toward famous women sets a precedent for hating any woman: If you build it, the trolls will come.” —The Portland Mercury
“A dazzling compendium of iconic feminist figures … The transhistorical connections between women are delightful, and Doyle showcases the breadth and depth of her knowledge as she moves with ease from Tara Reid to Hillary Clinton to Britney Spears to Marie Antoinette … However, where Trainwreck truly illuminates its readers is in its social and psychological reflections about origins of the narrative.” —Salon
“Smart, funny, and fearless.” —The Boston Globe
"In Sady Doyle’s sharp new book … she examines the particular pleasure our society has taken, for centuries, in tearing down publicly visible women … Illuminating. —The Huffington Post
“A ruthlessly funny, smart, and relentlessly on-point takedown of modern misogyny … Doyle’s debut book places her on the A-list of contemporary feminist writers.” —Publishers Weekly starred review
“Doyle shows the way women in general have been, and very often still are, tried for their very womanness, devoured for their flaws, and respected only once they’ve been reduced to smoldering ash. High-speed and immediately readable, Doyle's poignant take on the concept of the trainwreck, and its relation to feminism, will provoke much thought and discussion.” —Booklist starred review
“Some people take a scalpel to the heart of media culture; Sady Doyle brings a bone saw, a melon baller, and a machete. Trainwreck is a blistering indictment of how history has normalized sexism as entertainment, defining—and destroying—the women we claim to love.” —Andi Zeisler, author of We Were Feminists Once
“Sady Doyle’s wise, funny, bleak-when-it-needs-to-be voice has long been indispensable. With Trainwreck, she brilliantly connects the dots on the women our society likes to chew up and spit out. We need this book.” —Irin Carmon, co-author of the New York Times bestseller Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“Sady Doyle is audaciously funny and relentlessly fearless. I am amazed by her ability to hold contentious but vital feminist lines long after the rest of us have fled the war to hide under the covers. The supposed ‘trainwrecks’ of history (and the future) couldn’t hope for a more clear-eyed, steadfast champion.” —Lindy West, author of Shrill
“Sady Doyle is a wonder. She writes personally about the political and politically about the personal in a way that makes both worth reading. She’s also incisive, surprising, and funny as hell.” —Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody
“Sady Doyle is more than a writer, she’s a force of nature—a mostly benevolent one, like a cleansing forest fire that makes way for new growth. Her clear-eyed criticism, finely tuned prose, and always-questioning outlook combine to make hers one of the most necessary voices of our time. Plus she is very funny.” —Emily Gould, author of Friendship
“Sady Doyle is simply one of the smartest, funniest, most humane writers working today. In a time of too many takes, I always look forward to hers. If you agree with her, reading her work is cathartic; and if you don’t, take cover.” —Kate Harding, author of Asking for It
★ 09/01/2016
In her first book, journalist Doyle (Tiger Beatdown) invites us to interrogate the cultural figure of "the trainwreck": women who are ritually humiliated, find their careers destroyed, lose their privacy—in some cases their legal and physical autonomy—and are not infrequently left to die for their sins (real or imagined). Across eight thematic chapters, Doyle asks: Who are these women? What are their crimes? When caught in the vortex of a trainwreck narrative, what are their options? And finally, what role does the concept, and the individuals whose lives it devours, play in society? Each chapter includes historical and contemporary examples of real-life women whose behavior has been deemed so egregious as to put them beyond redemption: Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Jacobs, Valerie Solanas, Monica Lewinsky, Britney Spears, Rihanna, and more. VERDICT Well researched and intersectional, this unapologetically feminist critique of society's vicious treatment of women both famous and obscure who fail to conform to the expectations of normative straight, white femininity will appeal to readers of Jennifer L. Pozner's Reality Bites Back. [See "Editors' Fall Picks," p. 26.]—Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc. Lib., Boston
2016-07-19
How and why women are alternately idolized and then given hell for being the way they are.Doyle examines society’s fascination with powerful and/or successful females who suddenly go off-kilter, becoming someone or doing something that is not in tune with how they had acted before. Nicki Minaj, Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Paris Hilton, and many more modern women are well-known in the media for their occasionally wild antics, and Doyle studies the buildup of their celebrity status and their crashing downfalls. She also goes back in time to the likes of Mary Wollstonecraft, who was more famous in her day for her illegitimate child and suicide attempts than for her books, or Billie Holiday, who broke all sorts of barriers and is equally known for her heroin addiction as for her music. As the author notes, a “trainwreck” is “not just the cost of sharing the wrong things, or of being Visible While Female. She’s a signpost pointing to what ‘wrong’ is, which boundaries we’re currently placing on femininity, which stories we’ll allow women to have….And, in her consistent violation of the accepted social codes—her ability to shock, to horrify, to upset, to draw down loud and powerful condemnation—she is a tremendously powerful force of cultural subversion.” But it is society’s fascination with all women, not just the celebrities, and the effect and pressures women constantly face that form the crux of Doyle’s shrewd narrative. Throughout, she shows how any woman, thanks to the internet and especially social media, can now become an object of unwanted scrutiny. Fortunately, Doyle offers methods for women to fend off the endless observation, policing, and judgments, all of which are part of life for most women. A well-rounded, thoughtful analysis of what can make and break a woman when she’s placed in the spotlight.
