How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

The rose-gardening essay, The Rosary, is the collection's most-flagged weak link, several fans of the rest of the book admit they skimmed or skipped it outright. A cluster of readers calls the book close to a humble-brag, one describing it as “threaded with humblebrags about Spanish fluency and Iowa MFA.” Chee's proximity to wealthy, white literary circles, the Buckley cater-waiter job and his prep-school years among them, reads to one reviewer as undigested rather than examined, calling it flatly “Cringeworthy. He's in love with rich white people.” A critic notes the reference-dropping runs to “an endless well of obscure references,” which lands as showing off for some readers. At least one holdout just states, “I don't get the near-universal praise I'm seeing here.”