Review // A Memoir, Barbara Bush [1994]
When mirth exhausts its last bit of innocence - when the centrifugal force of the simulacra becomes unbearable, when teachers look to students for guidance and domesticated pets fall into crises of purpose - she is here for us, with her indignant1 recipe for chocolate chip cookies. In a world increasingly collapsing under the weight of its own self-awareness, beacons from a distant past that remind us of wars that did in fact happen wash over us like the comforting lies of a mother we could never disobey in the end.
We need this. We, cannibals of spirit.
1
Long story (see, pp 484-5).