SOURCE: "An Angst Even Shopping Cannot Cure," in The New York Times Book Review, October 9, 1994, p. 11.

[In the following review, Marling compares Just Who the Hell Is She, Anyway? to Japanese graphic novels and comments on its feminist themes.]

SHE is the daughter of (S)mother and Dad, the latter lost in a perpetual twilight zone in which visions of split-level houses, stacks of cash and female legs in fishnet stockings dance like sugarplums before his eyes. SHE, the product of a tract-house suburb and an indecisive skirmish with the liberal arts, is now single and in her 30's, a vice president at a Madison Avenue advertising agency, with a corner office and a galloping premature midlife crisis that even shopping cannot cure. You know you're in trouble when life is so burdensome that you conjure up angst-ridden fashion fantasies about Chanel doing cut-rate black rubber suits. And...