Karen Karbo is an American novelist, non-fiction writer and journalist.Freeman, Judith. "Book Review: Two Ripe Subjects: Hollywood, Marriage: The Diamond Lane by Karen Karbo," Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1991. Retrieved January 18, 2021.Burroway, Janet. "The Pistol in Dad's Bed," The New York Times, November 2, 2003. Retrieved January 19, 2021.Baker, Jeff. "Where I write: Karen Karbo kills zombies, keeps a pet ferret, writes witty books," The Oregonian, December 24, 2011. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
Karbo's three comic novels, Trespassers Welcome Here (1990),Brockman, Elin Schoen. "Life With the Lenin Sisters," The New York Times, May 21, 1989, Sect. 7, p. 11. Retrieved January 18, 2021. The Diamond Lane (1993),Ward, Robert. "When Mouse and Tony Got Married," The New York Times, May 19, 1991, Sect. 7, p. 9. Retrieved January 18, 2021. and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me (2001),Hodgman, Ann. "Please Baby, Please Baby," The New York Times, June 18, 2000, Sect. 7, p. 27. Retrieved January 15, 2021. were each named New York Times Notable Books. She may be best known for her "Kick Ass Women" series (2007–13)—biographical self-help guidebooks on Katharine HepburnCohen, Paula Marantz. "How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great by Karen Karbo," The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 6, 2007. Retrieved January 18, 2021. Coco Chanel,Kellogg, Carolyn. "'The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons From the World’s Most Elegant Woman’ by Karen Karbo," Los Angeles Times, September 6, 2009. Retrieved January 15, 2021. Georgia O'Keeffe,Larsen, Peter. "French women and Coco Chanel: what’s their secret?" Orange County Register, September 18, 2009. Retrieved January 15, 2021. and Julia Child.Cornelius, Trista. "Julia Child's savory life lessons inspire Portland writer Karen Karbo," The Oregonian, November 25, 2013. Retrieved January 19, 2021. Her other non-fiction works are Generation Ex: Tales From The Second Wives Club (2001),Jamison, Laura. "Divorce Is for Life," The New York Times, April 8, 2001, Sect. 7, p. 21. Retrieved January 19, 2021. The Stuff of Life: A Daughter's Memoir (2004),Kirkus Reviews. "The Stuff of Life," August 2003. Retrieved January 19, 2021. In Praise of Difficult Women (2018),Edelman, Judith. "Come Hell, Come Husbands," Los Angeles Review of Books, March 14, 2018. Retrieved January 20, 2021. and Yeah, No. Not Happening (2020).Publishers Weekly. "Yeah, No. Not Happening.: How I Found Happiness Swearing Off Self-Improvement and Saying F*ck It All—And How You Can Too," June 2020. Retrieved January 19, 2021. She has also written the three-book Minerva Clark children's mystery series (2005–7).Kirkus Reviews. "Minerva Clark Gets a Clue," August 15, 2005. Retrieved January 18, 2021.Kirkus Reviews. "Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs," October 15, 2006. Retrieved January 18, 2021.Karbo, Karen. Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost, New York: Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2007. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
Karbo has received an Oregon Book Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction, among other recognition.Los Angeles Review of Books. "Karen Karbo," Contributors. Retrieved January 15, 2021.National Endowment for the Arts. Literature Fellowships. Grants. Retrieved January 19, 2021. She has written essays, articles and reviews for Elle, Esquire, The New York Times,Karbo, Karen. "Goodbye Moon," The New York Times, December 4, 2005, Sect. A, p. 25. Retrieved January 18, 2021.Karbo, Karen. "Fear of Failing," The New York Times, July 20, 1997, Sect. 7, p. 17. Retrieved January 18, 2021. O, Outside,Outside. Karen Karbo, Published. Retrieved January 19, 2021. Salon.com,Salon.com Karen Karbo, Writers. Retrieved January 19, 2021. Vogue,Karbo, Karen and Sallie Tisdall. "Fair Game," Vogue, March 1994. Retrieved January 18, 2021. and other magazines.Feinstein, John (ed). The Best American Sports Writing 1996, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1996. Retrieved January 19, 2021. New York Times critic Janet Burroway described her books as "praised for their laugh-aloud, zinging, elbow-in-the-side wit," and her magazine work as in the tradition of participatory journalism writers such as George Plimpton or Bob Shacochis. Karbo lives in the south of France after previously residing in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles.Starr, Karla. "Karen Karbo: Local author gives teen girls a novel to investigate—ferrets included," Willamette Week, October 24, 2006. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
Fiction works
Novels Karbo's novels often draw on personal experiences—in college and the film industry, and with marriage, mortality and motherhood.Kennedy, Elliott. "Coffee with Karen Karbo," Flux, March 6, 2012. Retrieved January 15, 2021.Graeber, Laurel. "Let's Do Lunch," The New York Times, May 19, 1991, Sect. 7, p. 9. Retrieved January 18, 2021.Bradford, Robin. "Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me: A Novel," The Austin Chronicle, August 18, 2000. Retrieved January 18, 2021. Her first, Trespassers Welcome Here (1990, Village Voice Top Ten Book of the Year), tapped into her work in the USC Russian department to explore life in the West for a group of Russian emigres in a university Slavic languages department: a quartet of unrelated teaching assistants dubbed the "Lenin Sisters" and a famed author and teacher. The New York Times noted its abundant humor ranging from near-slapstick to wry wit, ear for the Russian accent, and deep sense of the transplanted Soviet psyche, describing it as "a novel about the pursuit of possibilities," whose unfolding first-person chapters both harmonize and generate surprising plots.
Her second novel, The Diamond Lane (1991), centers on two sisters juggling troubled but comical love lives and contrasting dreams of success.NPR. "5 Under-The-Radar Reads From Librarian Nancy Pearl," NCPR, December 19, 2014. Retrieved January 18, 2021. Library Journal called it "a deft, tragicomic social satire … noteworthy for the complexity of its characters, crisp prose, and loopy comic style";Hawthorn Books. "Largehearted Boy has the playlist for Karen Karbo’s novel The Diamond Lane in Book Notes," News, October 6, 2014. Retrieved January 15, 2021.Strayed, Cheryl. "Introduction" in Trespassers Welcome Here by Karen Karbo, Portland, OR: Hawthorn Books, 2014. Retrieved January 15, 2021. Los Angeles Times critic Judith Freeman wrote that it tackles two "notoriously fickle institutions requiring blind hope to sustain life"—Hollywood and marriage—with astringent humor. In 2014, librarian Nancy Pearl named the book as a favorite and one of her "under-the-radar reads" on National Public Radio.
Karbo's third novel, Motherhood Made a Man Out Of Me (2000), takes on the contradictory and heightened emotional states of new motherhood, through intertwined plots involving a married couple with a newborn and the woman's best friend, a pregnant gardener engaged to marry a man she finds out is already married. New York Times reviewer Ann Hodgman called it "peevishly hilarious," with thick layers of domestic detail, plot and characters portraying "the squalor and hatred that bubble under the surface of every marriage with a new baby."
Minerva Clark books In the 2000s, Karbo ventured into children's books seeking to entertain her fifth-grade daughter, Fiona, with something exciting and modern after she grew tired of Harry Potter. She created a Portland-based, technology-savvy, 13-year-old sleuth, Minerva Clark, who survives an electrocution accident, leaving her purged of self-consciousness and with a fearlessness suited to crime-solving. Described in Kirkus Reviews as a "cross between Nancy Drew and Adrian Monk," she is joined by three older brothers—one a computer genius—and a sidekick ferret.
Karbo wrote three books in the series: Minerva Clark Gets a Clue (2005), which involves identity development and identity theft; Minerva Clark Goes To The Dogs (2006), in which she helps a classmate locate a rare red diamond stolen from her ring; and Minerva Clark Gives Up The Ghost (2007), in which she looks for the missing ghost of a haunted grocery store victimized by arson.Bloomsbury. "Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost". Retrieved January 15, 2021.
Non-fiction works Like her novels, Karbo's non-fiction works draw on personal experience and phases of life. The New York Times called her first, Generation Ex: Tales From The Second Wives Club (2001), a "smart and ruefully funny examination of divorced life" peppered with solid statistics, anecdotes and hard-earned insight.Kirkus Reviews. "Generation Ex: Tales From The Second Wives Club," February 2001. Retrieved January 19, 2021. Publishers Weekly wrote that "Karbo makes ample use of her narrative instinct and canny eye for human foibles," evoking scenes between ex-spouses that achieve "an unerring blend of screwball comedy, tragic drama, feel-good fantasy and stalker flicks."Publishers Weekly. "Generation Ex: Tales from the Second Wives Club," April 2001. Retrieved January 19, 2021. Her The Stuff of Life: A Daughter’s Memoir (2008) was a departure, detailing Karbo's experience caring for her stoic, out-of-state father in his final year, while juggling work, her blended-family responsibilities, and conflicting emotions regarding caregiving, uncommunicative doctors, decline and loss.Karbo, Karen. The Stuff of Life,, The New York Times, November 2, 2003. Retrieved January 19, 2021. Reviews described the memoir—a New York Times Notable Book, People Magazine Critic’s Choice, and Oregon Book Award winner—as unembellished, wrenchingly sad and remarkably funny.Publishers Weekly. "The Stuff of Life," October 2003. Retrieved January 19, 2021.
Karbo's other, earlier non-fiction work includes Big Girl in the Middle (1997), co-written with volleyball star and model Gabrielle Reece, and essay contributions to anthologies such as The Bitch in the House (2003) and The Best American Sports Writing 1996, among others.Hanauer, Cathi (ed). The Bitch In the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage, New York: Harper, 2003. Retrieved January 18, 2021.
"Kick Ass Women" series In her "Kick Ass Women" series, Karbo developed what reviews collectively describe as a new form of biography mixing life story, philosophical treatise, self-help guide and autobiography.Siano, Maria. "Julia Child Rules," Foreword Reviews, Fall 2013. Retrieved January 19, 2021.Keegan, Peachy. "Movers and Shakers: Karen Karbo, Author," Whom You Know, May 10, 2010. Retrieved January 15, 2021. Intended as neither scholarly nor comprehensive, the series explores iconic women in short, researched volumes written in a humorous, conversational and occasionally rueful tone.Kornbluth, Jesse. "How Georgia Became O’Keeffe: Lessons on the Art of Living," Head Butler, November 22, 2011. Retrieved January 19, 2021. Karbo sought life-lessons from her subjects—in her words, early "self-branders" committed to successfully cultivating singular, unconventional, often eccentric personalities, paths and beliefs despite the heavy gender constraints of their eras.Publishers Weekly. "How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great," May 2007. Retrieved January 19, 2021.Karbo, Karen. "Excerpt from 'How to Hepburn'", USA Today, April 23, 2007. Retrieved January 19, 2021.