Review: I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED by Jennette McCurdy

 

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died , Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

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So, I was kind of reluctant to read this memoir when I first heard about it (though knowing nothing about the book) as I didn't like the title. It felt clickbait-y to me, and I just didn't like that at all. But then I got it from the library, and wow. Jennette McCurdy had such a difficult childhood as a child actress. She was forced into this work by her mum and abused for years by her. Reading this was difficult. McCurdy's story is traumatic and complicated. I really do applaud her for writing this.

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Review: ME VS BRAIN by Hayley Morris

 

Me vs Brain: An Overthinker’s Guide to Life by Hayley Morris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Brain: We left the oven on!
Me: No don't say that, I've not got time for this!
Brain: The house is probably on fire!
Me: Stop it, I need to write this book description.
Brain: But the blazing fire.
Me: We didn't even use the oven today.
Brain: But what if -
Me: No. We're not doing this, I'm finishing this description.

Hello there! Hayley Morris here. Or you might know me as the Brain Girl, and don't be fooled...it's not because I'm outrageously smart. Just an avid overthinker. I'm on a mission to prove once and for all that You. Are. Normal. Running through imaginary arguments whilst showering, hiding your knickers in the nurse's office before they look directly into your vagina, or not knowing how to be a normal human when you have the plumber over. I've spent the majority of my life saying and doing embarrassing things that wake me up in a cold sweat at 3am as my Brain reminds me of every minor detail.

In this book, I've overthought absolutely everything so you don't have to. I'll be talking about everything from dating to discharge, mental health to menstrual cups. I might not be able to banish your anxiety or make you feel 100% comfortable in your skin, but I hope I can at least give you a break from the constant brain chatter and we can rejoice and laugh at how similar we actually all are.

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I follow Hayley Morris on Instagram and think the videos she makes are wonderful, so I was interested in reading this as soon as it came out. And it's the first book I've read in a long time that I devoured in less than 24 hours.

This is a wonderful memoir-style book, and it's great for people like me who've got anxiety as it's reassuring. It's normalising so many symptoms of anxiety and saying it's okay to speak about them, it's okay to laugh about them, and it's okay to get help for them.

It's fun, and it's powerful, and it's sad at times too. You'll laugh and cry as you read this.

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Review: BLANK CANVAS by Marcy Gregg

 

Blank Canvas: The Amazing Story of a Woman Who Awoke from a Coma to a Life She Couldn’t Remember by Marcy Gregg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When Marcy Gregg awoke from a coma, 13 years had vanished from her memory.
She was 30 years old; she thought she was still 17. She didn’t recognize the man who introduced himself as her husband. She stared at pictures of the three children they said were hers, trying desperately to remember them, but her mind was blank.

Terrified and confused, Marcy did the only thing she could think of: she faked it. She told the doctors she was starting to remember and bluffed her way through visits from friends and family. Against all odds, it worked: she was released to a home, family, and life she should have known intimately―but seemed to be a stranger’s. How was she going to pull off the biggest acting challenge imaginable―and would her memories ever return?

Ghost Boy meets What Alice Forgot in this amazing true story of a woman who lost herself and tried to fight her way back on her own―but who found unexpected beauty in hope, faith, and second chances.

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When I heard about this memoir, I was so excited to then get an ARC through NetGalley. I love memoirs and I love chronic illness memoirs. I also love memoirs about motherhood, so this seemed like the perfect book for me. But I just... I didn't like it as much as I thought I was going to.

The storyline was good, well written, well plotted out. But it was more the writing style that I just didn't particularly get on with--though it worked well enough that I was able to finish the book. But I just found myself skipping over and skim-reading a lot of the religious parts. I understand that religion is hugely important to the writer, but I can't personally relate to this, and so I was more interested in the on-page interactions between Marcy and other characters, than her 'letters' to God. There did seem to be a lot of lamentation in these letters, which is understandable. I'm chronically ill and I know the frustration--but I found it laborious to read those parts, maybe because they did hit close to home, in part.

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Review: BODY WORK: THE RADICAL POWER OF PERSONAL NARRATIVE by Melissa Febos

 

Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Memoir meets craft masterclass in this “daring, honest, psychologically insightful” exploration of how we think and write about intimate experiences—“a must read for anybody shoving a pen across paper or staring into a screen or a past" (Mary Karr).

In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller’s life and the questions which run through it.

How might we go about capturing on the page the relationships that have formed us? How do we write about our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean for an author’s way of writing, or living, to be dismissed as “navel-gazing”—or else hailed as “so brave, so raw”? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong?

Drawing on her own path from aspiring writer to acclaimed author and writing professor—via addiction and recovery, sex work and Harvard night school—Melissa Febos has created a captivating guide to the writing life, and a brilliantly unusual exploration of subjectivity, privacy, and the power of divulgence. Candid and inspiring, Body Work will empower readers and writers alike, offering ideas—and occasional notes of caution—to anyone who has ever hoped to see themselves in a story.

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I came across this book on the reading list for the Contemporary Voices module in my MFA (a module I’m auditing). Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the lecture on this book, but as soon as I started Body Work, I grabbed a pencil because I knew I’d be annotating and underlining so much in this book.

Body Work is both a memoir and a book on writing memoir. Its essays explore feminism, patriarchy, trauma, shame, and the the healing power of writing—and all of this is done on a level I’ve never seen done before. This book was informative to read, for those writing memoir, intriguing and entertaining.

This is the first title from this author I’ve come across, but I immediately ordered two of her memoirs as she talks about her writing processes for them in this book, as she dismantles patriarchy and assesses why feminine narratives are seen as shameful so often.

Split into four sections, this book covers so much and offers thought-provoking topics. “In Praise of Navel-Gazing” encourages female writers to write their trauma unashamedly and to own their writing. “Mind Fuck: Writing Better Sex” gives advice on writing sex scenes but also encourages us to think about what sex is, especially when it’s always centered around hetero-normative constructs. “A big Shitty Party: Six Parables of Writing About Other People” documents Febos’s process as she considers who she’ll show early versions of her memoir to to check how they appear in the memoir and the importance of being kind. There’s tonnes of advice in here. And the final section, “The Return: The Art of Confession” is about trauma narratives and their healing power.

This book has so many wonderful lines on every page. I’ve never annotated a book so much and it made me critically think about my own memoirs I’m writing. I particularly appreciated the parts where Febos pointed out that we must recover all our memories to tell our stories in a complete way, including the memories we hid or blocked in order to survive.

There are thoughts about the personification of addiction and eating disorders, about abusive relationships, childhood, assault, and how writing is healing or can be. I feel I’m not doing this book justice in this review, but I highly recommend all memoir writers to read this.

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Review: NOT ALL BLACK GIRLS KNOW HOW TO EAT: A STORY OF BULIMIA by Stephanie Covington Armstrong

 

Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat: A Story of Bulimia by Stephanie Covington Armstrong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Stephanie Covington Armstrong does not fit the stereotype of a woman with an eating disorder. She grew up poor and hungry in the inner city. Foster care, sexual abuse, and overwhelming insecurity defined her early years. But the biggest difference is her race: Stephanie is black.
 
In this moving first-person narrative, Armstrong describes her struggle as a black woman with a disorder consistently portrayed as a white woman’s problem. Trying to escape her selfhatred and her food obsession by never slowing down, Stephanie becomes trapped in a downward spiral. Finally, she can no longer deny that she will die if she doesn’t get help, overcome her shame, and conquer her addiction to using food as a weapon against herself.
 
For more information about the book and eating disorders, visit www.notallblackgirls.com

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I read this book as part of my MA in Creative Writing as I'd chosen to examine race within eating disorder representation in YA novels. While this book isn't YA or a novel, I found Stephanie Covington Armstrong's memoir extremely helpful for my assignment in which I was arguing that a lot of YA depictions not only gender eating disorder as women's illnesses but also suggest that only white women get them. And this is exactly what Covington Armstrong writes about in this memoir.

The writing is beautiful, and, I'll be honest, the content is harrowing. Of course, there's dark stuff in here--not just around body image and eating disorders and the reality of having bulimia, but we also see how the author was sexually assaulted as a child by her uncle. We see her fragmented relationships with authority figures after this and her anger at various family members.

This book also really shows how eating disorders can be thought of as an addiction, something I hadn't really fully realised before. It was enlightening.

Structurally, it's divided into three parts: before the eating disorder, during, and after/the recovery. This last section did seem a bit simplistic at times, and the author highlights her reliance on God for recovery. This was the part I related to the least really, but as this is memoir and not fiction, how I relate to the events isn't really important. This is Covington Armstrong's story.

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Review: BROKEN PLACES & OUTER SPACES by Nnedi Okorafor

 

Broken Places & Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nnedi Okorafor was never supposed to be paralyzed. A college track star and budding entomologist, Nnedi’s lifelong battle with scoliosis was just a bump in her plan - something a simple surgery would easily correct.

But when Nnedi wakes from the surgery to find she can’t move her legs, her entire sense of who she is begins to waver. Confined to a hospital bed for months, unusual things begin to happen. Psychedelic bugs crawl her hospital walls; strange dreams visit her nightly. She begins to feel as if she’s turning into a cyborg. Unsure if she’ll ever walk again, Nnedi begins to put these experiences into writing, conjuring up strange, fantastical stories.
What Nnedi discovers during her confinement would prove to be the key to her life as a successful science fiction writer: In science fiction, when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks. While she may be bedridden, instead of stopping her journey Nnedi’s paralysis opens up new windows in her mind, kindles her creativity and ultimately leads her to become more alive than she ever could have imagined.

Nnedi takes the reader on a journey from her hospital bed deep into her memories, from her painful first experiences with racism as a child in Chicago to her powerful visits to her parents’ hometown in Nigeria, where she got her first inkling that science fiction has roots beyond the West. This was not the Africa that Nnedi knew from Western literature - an Africa that she always read was a place left behind. The role of technology in Nigeria opened her eyes to future-looking Africa: cable TV and cell phones in the village, 419 scammers occupying the cybercafés, the small generator connected to her cousin’s desktop computer, everyone quickly adapting to portable tech devices due to unreliable power sources. Nnedi could see that Africa was far from broken, as she’d been taught, and her experience there planted the early seeds of sci-fi - a genre that speculates about technologies, societies, and social issues - from an entirely new lens.

In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, Nnedi uses her own experience as a jumping off point to follow the phenomenon of creativity born from hardship. From Frida Kahlo to Mary Shelly, she examines great artists and writers who have pushed through their limitations, using hardship to fuel their work. Through these compelling stories and her own, Nnedi reveals a universal truth: What we perceive as limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths - far greater than when we were unbroken

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I came across this book when I was looking for own-voices books about disability. BROKEN PLACES & OUTER SPACERS was on a Buzzfeed List for memoirs on disability and illness, and I was immediately intrigued enough to buy the audiobook.

Nnedi Okorafor is an author of Afro-futurism SF and I've been meaning to read her fiction for so long. I had no idea that she'd experienced paralysis following what should've been routine surgery--and as someone who is also disabled, I immediately felt a connection to her. I've also been writing my own memoir and reading as many memoirs on disability and illness as I can, and I found the writing in this one so compulsive that I immediately wanted to dive back into my own memoir.

Okorafor gives a great overview of her childhood and her family, the genetic disorder she and her siblings inherited and how there was very much a 'before' and 'after' section to her life. I related to this so much, having been sporty myself before my body failed me.

This is a short read--but it covers so much. We learn how it was her disability that led her to start writing--something that she didn't think she'd have done was it not for this paralysis happening--and how her hallucinations during her initial time in hospital lured her into the speculative fiction world. We see how she's managing now as an adult, and we follow her through the difficult rehab process as a teenager.

This is a powerful read, highly recommended.

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Review: THE PLEASURE PLAN by Laura Zam

The Pleasure Plan: A Sexual Healing Odyssey--1 Woman, 6 Sexual Problems, 30 Curative Adventures by Laura Zam
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Pleasure Plan by Laura Zam

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book going in—but as soon as I heard about it, I knew I wanted to read it. I’m in a group with other writers whose releases have been affected by Covid-19, and we each decided to buy and review 5 other books from the group. When I saw Laura Zam’s book, I was so intrigued. And part of this is because I am asexual. I don’t experience sexual attraction—so reading a book about sexual wellbeing and learning how to heal so you can enjoy sex appealed to me because I was curious. Sexual attraction and sex drives are outside of my own experience. And I do like reading about things I don’t experience or don’t identify with. I am also a massive fan of medical memoir, and I read this whole book in under a day.

The Pleasure Plan is part medical memoir, part self-help book. Zam tells us her story of healing from sexual trauma and her experiences of vaginismus, a physiological condition that makes vaginal penetration difficult or impossible, due to the body’s reaction to fear instigating muscle spasms.

This is such a personal story and I really commend Zam in writing it. It can’t have been easy, and the prose is well-written and the story insightful. She examines various medical professionals’ views toward female sexual experiences and sexuality, also examining the agency needed when one seeks out a diagnosis. She also explored her celibate year and what her sexuality means for her.

This book is so, so personal. I think that’s one thing that really surprised me. It recounts some very intimate moments in her search for sexual healing, and in doing so, Zam makes herself vulnerable. This book reveals her bravery.

But this book isn’t just about sex. It’s also about her marriage and her husband. It’s about the experiences that shaped her, the childhood sexual abuse she suffered, and how assault is about power. It’s an examination of her past relationships and patriarchal cultures. It’s also a story about her family and friends too, those who support her, and how they’ve been subjected to the negatives of patriarchal culture. It’s about Zam’s work as a playwright and the one-person play she also wrote on this topic. It’s about her examining her pain from many different angles as she seeks to heal herself.

The Pleasure Plan is a very feminist text. Zam encourages women to take control of their bodies and shows them that their pleasure is important. It’s the feminist slant that I was really able to engage with. As an asexual, I didn’t really identify with Zam’s desire to “fix” her sexual problems, not on a personal level, but I did find it really interesting. Particularly the examination of sexual drive and Zam’s year of celibacy. (I was also really pleased to see it called celibacy as often it’s mistakenly referred to as asexuality—but right from the start, Zam tells us she’s a sexual being and doesn’t identify as asexual, so I was really pleased about this distinction.) Zam tells us of the many professionals she consulted and one of them—one of the first in the book—did say it is fine to have no libido. I really appreciated this—as so often asexuals are treated as if there’s something wrong with us that needs fixing. We’re often viewed as “broken.” And so when Zam questions the idea of being broken at the start—“what if I’m just broken?”—this was something that really engaged me and that I was able to relate to, albeit Zam was talking about the painful sex she experienced, and not identifying as asexual and being perceived as broken because of others’ views on asexuality.

But when you look at Zam’s experiences without focusing on sex and her quest for sexual healing, you see the statements that she’s also making about female health care. And these are universal things. Zam shows us how female health is often seen as of lesser importance than male health. It seems women are expected to endure some pain—and often female pain isn’t taken seriously or it’s just seen as “normal”. At one point in the book, Zam tells us of how she hides her pain, feeling ashamed to talk about it, only to discover she’s actually got complications from appendicitis and is at risk of becoming septic. The doctor tells her she must have a high pain threshold and I think this is a part that really spoke to me. Because this memoir highlights female resilience in a society where female pain isn’t talked about and thus female resilience is often overlooked or ignored.

The writing itself is really good—and it’s clear Zam is a writer. All the other people in her book have great descriptions and characterisation, and Zam is at times analytical in how these people’s behaviour is shaped by their own experiences. These people feel real.

The workbook/self-help sections did throw me a little. Each chapter ends with a little section where the reader is invited to work on healing from their own sexual trauma or dysfunction so they can enjoy sex. Obviously I am not the target market here, but I have never seen this format before in a medical memoir. It made it fresh and new, even if I was surprised at first. But for those reading this book because they also want sexual healing, I can really see how these parts will be helpful.

Overall, this is a thoughtful and insightful memoir that I’m sure will have significant value to many women seeking sexual healing.


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Review: HOW TO SURVIVE DEATH AND OTHER INCONVENIENCES by Sue William Silverman

How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences by Sue William Silverman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Many are haunted and obsessed by their own eventual deaths, but perhaps no one as much as Sue William Silverman. This thematically linked collection of essays charts Silverman’s attempt to confront her fears of that ultimate unknown. Her dread was fomented in part by a sexual assault, hidden for years, that led to an awareness that death and sex are in some ways inextricable, an everyday reality many women know too well.
              
Through gallows humor, vivid realism, and fantastical speculation, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences explores this fear of death and the author’s desire to survive it. From cruising New Jersey’s industry-blighted landscape in a gold Plymouth to visiting the emergency room for maladies both real and imagined to suffering the stifling strictness of an intractable piano teacher, Silverman guards her memories for the same reason she resurrects archaic words—to use as talismans to ward off the inevitable. Ultimately, Silverman knows there is no way to survive death physically. Still, through language, commemoration, and metaphor, she searches for a sliver of transcendent immortality.

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This is an exceptional essay collection. It really is.

I first came across this book when running Book Party Chat, an event designed to help authors whose recent releases have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. I interviewed Sue William Silverman, and we had a long chat about this book and her motivations for writing it.

I've long been a fan of memoir, but it's been quite a while since I've read an essay collection, and I was so excited to start. This book is all about death--in many different forms.

We start with an examination of understanding what death could be: "But isn't Death the ultimate Ultima Thule, the final boundary between the known and unknown worlds? What conditions must exist, what to pack in your carry-on, how to prepare to cross that liminal threshold from the State of Being to Non-Being? Better yet: How to escape it altogether? Or is death a great adventure like climbing Mr. Everest that would surely kill me in any event. [...] What is the appearance of the Ultima Thule of Death? Do I find it or does it find me? What does it sound like, taste like? Does death have a voice? Is it pure absence? I might not fear death if I could be alive to experience it."

These questions encourage the readers to think deeply--indeed, what death sounds like and tastes like, isn't something I've particularly thought much about. And the point about how we may not fear death if we "could be alive to experience it" is a fantastic one that raises the role of fear and the unknown in our perceptions of death.

I think it's safe to say that the author is somewhat obsessed by death and what it means. She examines the subject from multiple angles, really delving deep as she processes what it means. And this was a fascinating read, it really was.

Sue William Silverman examines how we can overcome death--in all its many forms--and this largely focuses on preserving our own memories, our record of life. For it is like that overcomes death, and we need to use the power of words and language to breathe life into our memories to allow them to "marinate for eternity": "To survive death you have to believe in magic, language, and memory."

And I love this. As a writer myself, I'm fascinated by the power of words and what language can do. And as a memoir writer as well, I'm particularly interested in how other authors approach writing their memories. HOW TO SURVIVE DEATH is a series of essays, each one showing us a glimpse into the author's life--we're plunged right into her memories in these essays, as we relive specific events with the author. The writing style submerges us in these scenes, and there's a strong feelings of 'being present now' as we read. I think this is because there's so much emotion embedded in the language and the scenes we're being shown; we really feel what Sue William Silverman was feeling at these times. It feels real.

My favourite essay (and this was such a hard thing to pick, because each is so powerful and important and so 'favourite' isn't exactly the right word) is "My Death in the Family." It's opening--"I die at four years old" is just such a powerful line, and I really found this glimpse of a moment in the author's childhood really powerful. Her father is building her a toy--a paper house and dolls--and these are based on their own family. As the author and her father are working on this, Sue feels a sense of disconnection and an almost feeling of fear at her disconnection: "Am I even still here? I pick up the scissors and press the blunt point against my palm. I feel it, but it's a distant ache. As if it's both my palm and not. Maybe it's the palm of the paper girl."

She then goes on to talk of her inexplicable fear of the paper girl, the girl they've crafted from paper that represents her. Sue purposefully makes a rip in the girl's neck, confident that her father will "never notice the small rips and tears in his nonpaper daughter's body". The paper girl with the ripped neck becomes a very apt metaphor as the author then tells readers of the childhood trauma and abuse she experienced, and this sense of disconnection between herself and what she feels--with the introduction of the paper girl as an alternate self--becomes clear as a way of the author processing what is happening: "This paper-like voodoo child is half-dead/half-alive. Her thin shoulder blades feel queasy. She's afraid to glance in the silver, gum-wrapper mirror. She might see only crayon features. Or, worse, no features at all. [...] In the doll's thin, vulnerable body, I see my own thin, vulnerable self."

Identity and the examination of how identity is reborn from the many different types of death is explored a lot in this essay collection, just as the many forms of death are examined.

While the essays in this collection are all drawn from the author's memories, there was one in particular that stood out to me in its examination of memory and how this links to illness and time, and this is "The Safe Side." In this essay, Sue William Silverman talks about bodily sensations and heartbeats, illness, and the reliability of memory. She describes a tip to the ER where a nurse is asking her about her symptoms, and then tells of how "Last night I _think_ a flutter in my heart awakens me" -- already the emphasis on "think" brings in questions of certainty, something which is then examined further as the author contemplates the roles of hallucinations and whether memories can be trusted, both at the time (or the day after she gets these symptoms), and months or even years later when looking back--as the Author's Note at the start of the essay collection tells us that her recollections "shift and change over the years as memories tend to do" and that the events in this book take "place in a compressed time and in non-chronological order, yet I have endeavoured to be accurate in these acts of recollection". I found this so enlightening, using this Author's Note and her ideas on recollection and memory in "The Safe Side" to think about how memories change, as it conjures questions of accuracy and reliability in any memoir at all, for a genre that is all about accuracy and telling a truth.

And this essay feels incredibly honest (well, each essay does). But "The Safe Side" ends with the author being told her heart rate is healthy and that she didn't have a heart attack. "_Some people imagine things_, the doctor said," and the author realises she can't explain the physical sensations she had. She knows she did not dream them, they weren't hallucinations, but medical science is unable to objectively confirm their presence. Therefore, she's only able to rely on her memories of the symptoms she's had, and this then encourages her to think about how death is her obsession and that she imagines death all the time. Yet this essay also spoke to me in terms of the way women are often treated by doctors too--would the doctor have said that some people imagine things, if it had been a man who was presenting with these symptoms that the tests couldn't confirm? I'm inclined to think not.

The writing style of this collection as a whole is wonderfully engaging, while of course being beautifully written. There are so many gems in this book, so many lines that just made me pause and think. As I read it, I found myself underlining so many sentences (in pencil, of course!). This is a book that really makes you think, and it's one that I don't think can be read solidly cover-to-cover in one go, simply because of how rich these essays are. Each requires its own thinking time for us to process and understand what the author is showing us, and what our thoughts in response are.

Overall, this is an incredibly powerful essay collection.

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Review: UNCOMFORTABLY NUMB by Meredith O'Brien

Uncomfortably Numb: a memoir by Meredith O'Brien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

About losing one’s life as it was once imagined, and the ultimate, uneasy peace that’s achieved with the permanent uncertainty which accompanies living with a chronic illness.

It begins with numbness on her left leg. Then it spreads. Even though an MRI finds a “mass” on her brainstem, it takes two more years for Meredith O’Brien to learn what is causing that numbness. Months after her 65-year-old mother dies from a fast-moving cancer, weeks after her father is hospitalized and she experiences an unexpected job change, she learns she has multiple sclerosis.

Suddenly, Meredith, a married mother of three teens, has to figure out how to move forward into a life she no longer recognizes. 

Reimagining her life as a writer and an educator, as a mother and a spouse, she has to adjust to the restrictions MS imposes on her. 

It is a life, altered.

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Wow, this memoir--it's just... wow.

I've had my eye on Uncomfortably Numb for quite a while. Back when I was researching medical memoirs (sometime around October 2019), this one was recommended to me. And I was just so excited to read it.

Fast forward to March 2020, and what with the Covid-19 outbreak, I decided to set up #BookPartyChat on Twitter, to celebrate the releases of books where events had been cancelled. And when Meredith O'Brien, author of Uncomfortably Numb, got in touch, I was so happy. Talking to her for an hour about this memoir was a dream come true!

A couple of days before our interview, I started this memoir. And I just couldn't read it fast enough.

It tells Meredith's story as she develops alarming symptoms and is later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

I'll admit, I didn't know much about MS before reading this memoir. Everything I did know was either on a super basic level or based on media portrayal, which isn't always that great (and is something I've written on before). Uncomfortably Numb taught me so much about what MS is--or at least what it is for Meredith. Of course, like many chronic illnesses, it's so individual and dependent on the person.

At times, this book was quite a tough read. It was harrowing in places. And I saw myself--as a chronic illness sufferer--in these pages so much. Especially when Meredith talks about how doctors didn't believe her, wrote her symptoms off as anxiety, and refused to take her seriously at times. Meredith also examines how females often aren't taken seriously by medical professionals--another thing I've encountered myself. Thus, while I do not have MS, this memoir has so many relatable moments.

It's also not just about MS. We get a glimpse into Meredith's wider life and other events going on during this time (after all, illness isn't an isolated incident--it affects everything). This book covers her mother's death, her teaching at university, her experiences as a grad student, and the publication of a book. We get to know her husband and children, her friends and colleagues. And everything just feels so real.

The writing craft itself in this book is really good too. Stylistically, Meredith's writing flows and just demands to be read. I've read quite a few medical memoirs, but I have to say, I think this is one of the best, and I'll be recommending it for years to come.

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Review: THINGS WE DIDN'T TALK ABOUT WHEN I WAS A GIRL by Jeannie Vanasco

Jeannie Vanasco has had the same nightmare since she was a teenager. She startles awake, saying his name. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her.

When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides—after fourteen years of silence—to reach out to Mark. He agrees to talk on the record and meet in person. "It's the least I can do," he says.

Jeannie details her friendship with Mark before and after the assault, asking the brave and urgent question: Is it possible for a good person to commit a terrible act? Jeannie interviews Mark, exploring how rape has impacted his life as well as her own. She examines the language surrounding sexual assault and pushes against its confines, contributing to and deepening the #MeToo discussion.

Exacting and courageous, Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl is part memoir, part true crime record, and part testament to the strength of female friendships—a recounting and reckoning that will inspire us to ask harder questions and interrogate our biases. Jeannie Vanasco examines and dismantles long-held myths of victimhood, discovering grace and power in this genre-bending investigation into the trauma of sexual violence.

I was lucky enough to get an advanced reading copy of Things We Didn’t Talk About When I was a Girl by Jeannie Vanasco. While this memoir is a little different from the others I’ve been reading, it truly is fantastic. In it, Vanasco recounts the sexual assaults she’s experienced while also analysing rape culture. It is a truly amazing book and I highly recommend that everyone reads it. Honestly, it is so important. (It releases October 1st, 2019.) 

What has struck me in particular about Vanasco’s memoir is how personal and honest it is. When writing about another person, there's always the risk of repercussions. Vanasco gets around this beautifully in her memoir, writing it as she seeks permission from those she talks about, and gives us their exact words. She also tells readers how her memories may not be reliable — but that the memories of those she speaks to also will not be reliable. Her book feels entirely honest and brave for that reason.

The book itself alternates between Vanasco's narrative to us and a transcription of two different phone calls that she has with her rapist, many years after the rape occurred. It's written in 'real time' as Vanasco transcribes the phone calls, and so we see her pauses and breaks and what she thinks about, and who else she speaks to. 

What makes this memoir different to others about sexual assault though is Vanasco's attitude toward her rapist and her ongoing struggle to feel the anger she expects she should feel. She and Mark were very good friends for years before the rape, and so she frames her memoir as an investigation of how a good person can do something bad. 

This book doesn't only look at sexual assault and the power in that though. It looks at how power is inscribed in language too, and how different ideologies are constructed on the basis of power and exchanges. Vanasco delves deeply into these ideas as she talks with her friend who's a gender studies lecturer, and the conversations recounted are fascinating and enlightening. 

This is a hugely important book--possibly the most important book I've ever read--and I highly suggest that everyone reads it. 

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a review copy. 

Review: BRAIN ON FIRE by Susannah Cahalan

An award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity.

When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.

My rating: 5 stars

Brain on Fire tells the story of Post journalist Susannah Cahalan, a seemingly healthy twenty-four-year-old as she is struck down with a variety of strange symptoms--seizures, obsession with bedbugs, flu, and hallucinations to name a few--and follows her frightening battle to get diagnosed.

I picked up this book shortly after I was diagnosed with a neuropsychiatric illness and had started writing my own memoir. I wanted to see how Susannah had written hers, and I'd already seen the Netflix adaptation of Brain on Fire, which I thought had been well done.

Like Susannah, I struggled to get a diagnosis and my problems were also assumed to be solely psychological at one point. I related so much to so many things she went through.

This book is wonderfully written. It's poignant and gives a thorough insight into what exactly Susannah experienced--even though a lot of it, she admits she can't remember. Instead, the passages around her month in hospital have been constructed from interviews, tape recordings, and diary entries her family made. Yet this passage is still told in first person. As such, when Susannah describes having a brain biopsy, there was something a little unnerving about hearing each step that was performed, but narrated by her, in first-person. It brought me out of the story a little.

There's a fair bit of medical terminology and medical explanations in here, and at times I found it a little dense. But it really helped to paint a good picture of this illness, and I'd highly recommend it.