From cel­e­brat­ed nov­el­ist Elisa Albert comes The Snarling Girl, a col­lec­tion of ener­getic essays writ­ten over the course of the last decade. Albert’s voice is like none oth­er — brazen, provoca­tive, and hon­est. It makes clear that this snarling girl isn’t afraid to ​“go there.”

More often than not, ​“there” is Albany, New York, where Albert lives. She has what one might call a love – hate rela­tion­ship with her city. In the essay ​“Spring, Albany” — the first of four titles to name the city and its sea­son — Albert relates how she and her fel­low res­i­dents ​“watch the sun set on [Rockefeller’s] stu­pid / out­ra­geous / ter­ri­fy­ing / beau­ti­ful Plaza.” In the para­graphs that fol­low, she alter­nate­ly tries to con­vince a wary new­com­er of Albany’s mer­its (cama­raderie! out­door activ­i­ties! events!) and wants to move else­where (pes­ti­ci­dal water, small-town gos­sip, rou­tine run-ins with traf­fic vio­la­tors). It is Albert’s con­stant grap­pling with her city that uni­fies an oth­er­wise eclec­tic collection.

Lat­er in the book, Albert refers to her­self as ​“ever the fla­neur,” or saun­ter­er, a label that can also be used to describe the col­lec­tion as a whole. Indeed, Albert’s book wan­ders across top­ics, nev­er set­tling on just one. An essay about her love of singer – song­writer Ani DiFran­co — clev­er­ly called ​“Ani-fes­to” — appears next to an essay that con­nects our wor­ship of screens to Moses’s smash­ing of the tablets. In the essay after that, Albert skew­ers those on the ​“insen­si­tive-to-fuck­ing-ass­hole spec­trum” who give her a hard time for hav­ing ​“only” one child. While some read­ers may desire more the­mat­ic cohe­sion from the col­lec­tion, Albert shows her­self to be a writer of many inter­ests and emo­tion­al investments.

One of those invest­ments is Jew­ish rit­u­al and iden­ti­ty. Through­out the book, Albert writes about the stress of being a ​“per­fect host­ess, per­fect Jew­ess” at her Passover seder; dis­cuss­es the lit­er­ary lega­cy of Philip Roth; recounts a vis­it to the mik­vah; and enu­mer­ates some of the anti­se­mit­ic com­ments she’d received. In one of her most whim­si­cal, dynam­ic essays, ​“Ear­ly Auto­bi­og­ra­phy via Prox­im­i­ty to Fame, or When Peo­ple Ask Me What It Was Like Grow­ing Up in L.A.,” Albert recalls being in class­es and groups with fel­low Jews who have since achieved vary­ing lev­els of celebri­ty — among them, John Hughes’s sound­track com­pos­er, the son of the founder of Noah’s Bagels, and the estimable Grace Paley. She con­cludes the essay by under­min­ing its very premise: 

I [then] became per­ma­nent­ly jad­ed, find­ing it absolute­ly pathet­ic, to say noth­ing of exis­ten­tial­ly crush­ing and spir­i­tu­al­ly bereft and moral­ly sus­pect, when peo­ple even sub­tly angle toward fame, or attempt to name drop for any rea­son at all, in any con­text what­so­ev­er. So! The end. 

Of course, not all of Albert’s essays end with a wink. In ​“Vagi­na Jail,” Albert sits in a room­ful of doula trainees and rages against the mis­treat­ment and inequities faced by child­bear­ing peo­ple. And in ​“Win­ter, Albany,” she relays a heart­break­ing sto­ry about a cher­ished fam­i­ly mem­ber. Struc­tural­ly, this essay stands out from the rest. Where­as the oth­ers tend to wan­der and list, ​“Win­ter, Albany” is strict­ly nar­ra­tive, pro­pelling itself toward its trag­ic con­clu­sion. In that way, it’s a refresh­ing depar­ture from the pat­tern Albert has created.

Ulti­mate­ly, there’s an essay in The Snarling Girl for all of us — per­haps because there’s a snarler in all of us, each of us relieved that we’re not the first to feel the stu­pid / out­ra­geous / ter­ri­fy­ing / beau­ti­ful things that this writer has her­self felt.