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3.26 AVERAGE
3.26 AVERAGE
I don't remember who recommended this to me, so I can't thank them. It was beautiful and painful and haunting, all of which are things I didn't really need on my heart at the moment, but now that they're there, they won't be going anywhere any time soon.
"The edge of something new against the edge of something old, and both just as empty."
"The edge of something new against the edge of something old, and both just as empty."
OOF. How can you steal somebody's memorial, not notify their family, then put said memorial in a book that discusses your own grief, and turn a profit? Even before I discovered this detail, I would have given this memoir a lower rating. It is ironic that the author struggles to find meaning and purpose in her life because that is exactly what I am lacking to identify in this book. Depression and grief take on various forms for every individual, so I am not attempting to marginalize her experiences; however, I cannot describe the author's message. It is as fragmented and abandoned as all the places she mentions (but never really explores).
I can't honestly decide how I feel about this book. There were several bits of it that really resonated with me individually, and some of the writing was downright gorgeous, but a lot of it felt distant and kind of pointless. There were a lot of narrative threads, but they never really came together for any kind of meaningful discussion or conclusion; the whole thing seemed to end up being a meditation on the meaninglessness of life, which did not feel particularly original or worthwhile.
Other reviewers here have commented on the author's privilege and insulated worldview, and I definitely get a bit of that. I went to college in a town of 40,000 people in rural western Illinois. The student population featured a high percentage of Chicagoland natives, and I would often hear them make patronizing little remarks about it being such a "small town", which sounded ridiculous to me, having grown up in the country surrounded by isolated towns in the one-to-two-thousand range. Early on in the book, when she refers to Gary, IN, a city of 80,000 souls, as "almost completely abandoned", my eyes about rolled out of my head.
And despite all her contemplation, the narrator strikes me as almost incurious; she travels extensively and sees amazing things, and then she bends and trims them to fit them into her viewpoint, rather than altering or expanding her viewpoint to take in new perspectives. The title strikes me as an interesting choice, because it seems like the author can't imagine another's perspective and doesn't really try. It's all navel-gazing and no exploration. Despite all her wanderings and gathering of facts, she seems to learn and grow surprisingly little.
Other reviewers here have commented on the author's privilege and insulated worldview, and I definitely get a bit of that. I went to college in a town of 40,000 people in rural western Illinois. The student population featured a high percentage of Chicagoland natives, and I would often hear them make patronizing little remarks about it being such a "small town", which sounded ridiculous to me, having grown up in the country surrounded by isolated towns in the one-to-two-thousand range. Early on in the book, when she refers to Gary, IN, a city of 80,000 souls, as "almost completely abandoned", my eyes about rolled out of my head.
And despite all her contemplation, the narrator strikes me as almost incurious; she travels extensively and sees amazing things, and then she bends and trims them to fit them into her viewpoint, rather than altering or expanding her viewpoint to take in new perspectives. The title strikes me as an interesting choice, because it seems like the author can't imagine another's perspective and doesn't really try. It's all navel-gazing and no exploration. Despite all her wanderings and gathering of facts, she seems to learn and grow surprisingly little.
"We all do it. Fantasize disaster. Perhaps that's why we stare and get angry when we look too long."