A few years ago I read an entire book before realizing I had already read it. I looked back at my Goodreads read list and realized I had no memory of about half of the books on there. So I built a new habit – (almost) every time I finish a book, I word-vomit my thoughts and emotions into a note on my phone. Sometimes they’re brief, sometimes they’re long-longwinded, sometimes they just ramble…and now I’m putting them here. Please enjoy the madness.
SPOILERS AHEAD…
Stephanie Danler makes me want to write. She tells her stories with such ease. They flow so well from one thought to another and even when it seems like the two pieces wouldn’t naturally follow each other, somehow they work. The way she understands the world and herself and how her life has shaped her doesn’t come with the arrogance that memoirs are always in danger of dipping toward. Or the cliches. She can be self aware without being boastful of it. She can explain pain and damage in such a raw way that it’s hard not to relate. Her story and the way she tells it gets right down into the depths of what it means to be a child and a parent and how it’s all so fragile.
The things parents do for their children to make them turn out well is such an amazing sacrifice and doing it or not doing it has an extreme effect on a human life (multiple, really). And the ways we are bound to these people no matter what, no matter how they damage us. I had a happy childhood but I was still struck by the way she breaks those relationships wide open. She talks about her self the way we all talk in our heads but cant quite articulate and would almost never say to others. Just like in her fiction, it feels like she’s telling more truth than her own. And it was so honest. I just loved every part of it.