19 Comments

You have read a lot of memoir lately! I am not a huge fan of memoir, I think I am jealous of folks who can drop everything and fall apart. I have never had that luxury (looking at you, Eat, Pray, Love). I did like this one, but probably because the only thing we had in common was our moms dying of cancer when we were in our 20s. But they were different experiences with completely different aftermaths. Thanks for the review and onto a novel! Happy St Pat’s….

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Thanks, Kate! Sorry you lost your mom so young. Donna did as well. Yes, it's time to set memoirs aside for a bit. Happy St. Pat's to you, too!

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So weird, I'm literally in the middle of reading this book right now!

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What do you think so far?

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I agree with you something isn't completely clicking tho that might be the book been so hype for me before. It is making me hungry tho

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I tried to read this one and it sounded like a personal essay from the get. I want to be put into the story I don’t want exposition. I also seriously struggle with food descriptions as like a personal issue so maybe I’ll skip this one. I loved your own psychoanalysis lol

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Thanks, Natalie! Yep, sounds like this book wouldn't be for you. And I also wondered if this would have worked better as a personal essay instead of a full-on book. I think it started as an essay, if memory serves.

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OMG, I read your comment, 1000% agreed about food descriptions (and for me, photos of food often wind up turning me off to that food). Then I looked at who wrote the comment and laughed out loud. OF COURSE it was you. It HAD to be you! My bookie soul sister 🧡

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We really are 🫶🏼

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lol that culture study article also tempted me to read ACOTAR

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Ha! I think I'm going to have to just give in and read it at some point!

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I love that you can acknowledge that while a book may not be YOUR jam, it still can have merit and be meaningful for others ♥️ I personally struggle to write ANYTHING about memoirs I don't like because it is painful for me to judge someone's life story versus a fictional tale. I will often just focus on the style of writing rather than content, but even that can feel fraught!

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Thanks, Katy! Memoirs are so hard to write about for this reason. It's very difficult to separate the book from the person, especially if they are still alive. One of the core aims of BoG is to not discuss books whether they are good or bad in some sort of objective or absolute sense, but to discuss how a book made us feel, what we thought about it, and to celebrate the fact that while something might not work for me, it could work for others. There's too much negative energy and scolding and fighting in the book world already. I don't want to contribute to it.

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And THANK YOU for that!!

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I’m interested you didn’t connect with this Mike! I do often think the emotional response people can have from memoirs can tend to be heavily rooted in their personal life - they’re able to identify with struggles of the author and that’s why they are so touched. When I read ‘Crying in H Mart’ I had just been diagnosed and I was feeling alot of emotions around sickness & identity. So reading it just punched me in the gut. But as you say - we all process and display emotion differently and one is not better than the other! I loved the way she approached the novel. Memoir criticism is hard as you never want to come across as criticising their actual life / experience! FYI I think you struck a good balance.

I do also think reading too many memoirs back to back can be very exhausting! It’s good to split them up. Ps can’t wait for you to read Mother Doll as I know how long you’ve been waiting! Looking v much forward to the review!

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Thank you so much for this comment, Martha. Spot on. I hope you're feeling better, and I'm glad you connected to her journey. I'm glad also the review came across as balanced. I was really worried about that because, as you mentioned, I didn't want to come across as judgmental about her personally. I'm excited to get into Mother Doll at last!

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I’m so relieved about this review because I really did not like this book at all (and I both love memoirs and lost my mom to cancer in my 20s, so by all rights, I *should* have loved it). I found Hausner to be an insufferable, unlikeable brat, honestly. Harsh, I know, but I am never good at sitting with “this didn’t click for me”; I often have to process something a lot to land on exactly why. And that was it. I didn’t like her. At times I wanted to smack her and yell “grow TF up” (to be clear, not the parts when she was sad that her mother was dying or had died, just the parts where she was acting spoiled, entitled, and inconsiderate). I finished it only because I wondered if not liking her was a device, and by the end I’d wind up liking her because she has a personal transformation. But nope. She definitely transformed, but I didn’t like her any better by the end.

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Thanks for sharing, Amy. Sorry to hear about your mom. I totally get what you’re saying about the book. I wondered if she was trying to be candid about her behavior as a way to show she was learning and growing. 🤷‍♂️

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That’s what I was hoping would be my takeaway by the end, and I’m sure she did grow; I just didn’t like the new her much better 🤷🏼‍♀️

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