Los Angeles Times Bestseller "For any memoirist writing today, but particularly for one whose class, ethnicity, and sexuality may have left her with the feeling that she's #145;still arriving,' there's strong motivation to stick to the interstate, hoping it will lead to a stunning epiphany, a twelve-city book tour, and a fat movie deal. I find something bracingly feminist, daringly queer, and poignantly democratic in Mary Cappello's choice to take the nearest exit. Her rare articulation of life's off-kilter moments makes me feel less alone in my own awkward interior." -- Women's Review of Books "Mary Cappello['s] inventive, associative taxonomy of discomfort . [is] revelatory indeed." -- MARK DOTY , author of Dog Years: A Memoir and Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems "An original, psychologically and culturally insightful book, a great pleasure to read." -- JOSIP NOVAKOVICH , author of Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust and April Fool's Day "At once comforting and startling . Cappello's adventurous meditation .

makes memory seem like something worth re-making, and not the casual currency it has become. It is a remarkable achievement." -- ADAM PHILLIPS , author of Going Sane and Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life "Daring in both content and form, Awkward is a wonderfully unpredictable riff on the human predicament." -- DAWN RAFFEL , author of Carrying the Body and The Secret Life of Objects "With Awkward: A Detour , Mary Cappello becomes to my mind now the Kepler of human flesh and bone and of the soul of the worlds in which they move . Hers is a wonderful, suddenly essential book." -- DONALD REVELL , author of The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye and Tantivy "A wonderful, multi-layered piece of writing, with all the insight of great cultural criticism and all the emotional pull of memoir. A fascinating book." -- SARAH WATERS , author of The Night Watch and The Little Stranger.