Exceptionally astute, artistic, and eviscerating novelist Messud (The Burning Girl, 2017) gathers essays and reviews in a collection that affirms the significance and power of "original expression of authentic experience" and the sheer pleasure of reading. Messud's works of finely wrought family history, depicting her Canadian mother's world and that of her French Algerian father, who took the family to "global hot spots" on curiously risky vacations, are candid and spellbinding. Clearly Messud's sharp observational skills were honed by competing family heritages and sensibilities during her cosmopolitan upbringing, and she also contemplates the impact of her youthful reading of women authors. As she picks apart a jumble of memories, feelings, and facts, Messud's personal essays are, by turns, mischievously funny, emotionally wrenching, and elegantly intellectual. In her criticism she writes of Albert Camus (whose background mirrors that of her father), Kamel Daoud, Jane Bowles, Teju Cole, and Carnegie Medal winners Valeria Luiselli and Sally Mann. Writing of our "dark and riven times" before the full misery of our current predicament, Messud steers us to the light of forthright inquiry, truth, and beauty.