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Da Capo Press — Brett Sokol, Ocean Drive

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Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids, & Rock n’ Roll by Evelyn McDonnell Da Capo Press — Brett Sokol, Ocean Drive

What sets Evelyn McDonnell’s memoir head and tattooed shoulders above the ever burgeoning ranks of “mommy-come-lately” lit isn’t simply its dry wit, or the often startling personal honesty it deploys while careening through three decades of bohemianism, from the dance floor to the bedroom and back again. Even more refreshing is Mamarama’s rich chronicle of our larger cultural terrain: McDonnell moves from a small-town Midwestern upbringing on to the Ivy League elite, and from a career amidst the Lower East Side’s shabby chicdom to Miami Beach’s billion-dollar sandbar, where she’s currently The Miami Herald’s pop-culture critic, juggling the demands of a newborn child while interviewing an equally imperious Jay-Z.

The post-punk milieu of the Reaganite ’80s, the Riot Grrrl media explosion at the dawn of the Clintonite ’90s, drugged-out electronica at the turn of the millennium, and today’s hip-hop world—it’s all here, complete with one priceless moment of creeping adulthood inside the Marlin Hotel’s bathroom during the annual bacchanalia of the DJ-focused Winter Music Conference. McDonnell found herself desperately fighting through the crowd for a stall to use as its designers had originally intended, “only to have the door yanked open by another trio looking for somewhere to do their illicit business....‘You’re cute. Where are you from?’ they chatted, as I sat there with my pants around my ankles and my hands covering my red face. This was at 4 p.m.—the night hadn’t even started yet.” For a woman who once defiantly marched down the wedding aisle in a gorilla mask, craving a little propriety was no doubt a humbling act. But it certainly makes for a memorable coming-of-age tale.