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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
To be honest, I did not finish this book. I am finding it quite depressing and just don't relate to the characters. It seems well written, so don't take the review of an overly sensitive new mother to heart! Enjoy!
If I were being honest, as the main character talked about how good the pain pills were making her feel, I thought maybe I should try that. Of course by the end I was both thankful I haven't but also wondering about a few people in my life. I'm giving the book a three because she leaves you hanging about the girl at the end going or not to the AA meeting and the ending was yet again abrupt. As with most of her stories.
This is my second Jennifer Weiner book and the last one I will bother reading. I'm not sure how this book has such a high rating. The first book I read by this author was The Next Best Thing. I wondered if it was just a fluke that I felt like the author was convinced her audience wasn't very bright due to the fact that she had to bring up the main character's facial scar 255 times in the book. This scar impacted every aspect of her life and was apparently supposed to make the reader feel bad and excuse the "heroine's" bad choices in life. She has a scar! She treats the people that love her horribly, but she has a scar!!!
In All Fall Down, I realize the author either really does believe her readers have short-term memory loss and constantly need to be reminded of her characters flaws, or she just doesn't have enough material to reach the necessary word count and has to keep repeating the same information. Allison love pills! She's addicted, people! She really loves pills! She crunches them ALL DAY LONG!! It's beyond frustrating to read, because it takes three hundred repetitious pages to get to a place where the story actually moves forward and be resolved by the ending twenty pages later. Very disappointing reading material.
In All Fall Down, I realize the author either really does believe her readers have short-term memory loss and constantly need to be reminded of her characters flaws, or she just doesn't have enough material to reach the necessary word count and has to keep repeating the same information. Allison love pills! She's addicted, people! She really loves pills! She crunches them ALL DAY LONG!! It's beyond frustrating to read, because it takes three hundred repetitious pages to get to a place where the story actually moves forward and be resolved by the ending twenty pages later. Very disappointing reading material.
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I follow Jennifer Weiner on Twitter for The Bachelor and read all her books. I really wanted to love this, and it had its moments.
This book served it's purpose: to help me take my mind off everything that was bothering me and to get some sleep, much like Allison taking a Perc to unwind. I'd like to focus on that positive aspect, because Weiner's writing is typically enjoyable and witty. It is a testament to craft to write a work that frees the reader from care and provides pure escapism.
I want to give a kudos to Weiner for addressing the many missing components of our mental health system. Every person deserves compassionate care from highly qualified providers regardless of the decisions or circumstances that led them to require such care. By her making Allison maybe the least sympathetic patient (yet still sympathetic) in rehab, perhaps more people will develop a sense of empathy and outrage for those individuals with horrifying back stories, unable to get efficacious treatment.
This morning, the front page of my paper was devoted to the story of a veteran who died in a police standoff while waiting for court ordered VA treatment of PTSD. The judge interviewed explained that he had ordered treatment following a domestic violence charge but getting it was impossible. This veteran drove a jeep around a field looking for IEDs in the week before his death. Individuals who need help should not have to wait for a bed, and should not have to be well connected to receive care in a decent facility. Allison's need for a required number of therapy sessions to receive a day pass, when a shortage of therapists prevented her from receiving them, is just one example of the kinds of challenges patients encounter when confronted with a shortage of resources.
This book served it's purpose: to help me take my mind off everything that was bothering me and to get some sleep, much like Allison taking a Perc to unwind. I'd like to focus on that positive aspect, because Weiner's writing is typically enjoyable and witty. It is a testament to craft to write a work that frees the reader from care and provides pure escapism.
I want to give a kudos to Weiner for addressing the many missing components of our mental health system. Every person deserves compassionate care from highly qualified providers regardless of the decisions or circumstances that led them to require such care. By her making Allison maybe the least sympathetic patient (yet still sympathetic) in rehab, perhaps more people will develop a sense of empathy and outrage for those individuals with horrifying back stories, unable to get efficacious treatment.
This morning, the front page of my paper was devoted to the story of a veteran who died in a police standoff while waiting for court ordered VA treatment of PTSD. The judge interviewed explained that he had ordered treatment following a domestic violence charge but getting it was impossible. This veteran drove a jeep around a field looking for IEDs in the week before his death. Individuals who need help should not have to wait for a bed, and should not have to be well connected to receive care in a decent facility. Allison's need for a required number of therapy sessions to receive a day pass, when a shortage of therapists prevented her from receiving them, is just one example of the kinds of challenges patients encounter when confronted with a shortage of resources.
I was extremely disappointed with this book. A lot of what went on was not only completely unrealistic, but could never happen. Pills are much more regulated than it is made out to be in the book. For example, doctors would NEVER be allowed to just call in a prescription for a pain killer. They need to 1) see the patient in person and 2) write a handwritten script that is physically dropped off at the pharmacy. Also, doctor shopping would not me a legitimate way to get around the issue of needing more pills.
The book was an okay read, but the characters were a little flat, and it left SO MANY questions unanswered at the end of the book. What was the change in her daughter that took place? Did her and her husband ever move back in together? It never really talked about why the decision was made for them to live separately.
The book was an okay read, but the characters were a little flat, and it left SO MANY questions unanswered at the end of the book. What was the change in her daughter that took place? Did her and her husband ever move back in together? It never really talked about why the decision was made for them to live separately.
Allison Weiss begins abusing pain pills because she has to take care of her kid, deal with her father who has Alzheimer's (but not really, because he lives with her mother), take care of the house and write five blog posts a week.
This...this is what most of the women I know do every day, except those women actually have to leave the house to go to work and have to do more than 500 words. But fine, I'll suspend my disbelief a bit and go with the idea that Allison is a special snowflake.
By the way, this isn't Allison's fault. Her newspaper reporter husband got a book advance and then made her leave Philadelphia to live in a McMansion! And then her blog was discovered and she was hired as a writer and made so much money! And she has to take her child to school!
My gripes:
I'd take pills too, if Ellie were my kid. Methinks the wrong Weiss had prescriptions.
I ROARED at the notion that Dave, the Philadelphia newspaper City Hall reporter, having conservative attitudes. I worked at a newspaper too, and I think it's genetically impossible for a newspaper reporter in this area to be anything less than 100% DNC-4-lyfe.
Why AA and not NA?
For an author named Jennifer who wrote a main character named Allison, she did a lot of ragging on the popularity of the names Ashley and Brittanys. As a Kimberly, it's my duty to tell you that the names Jennifer, Allison, and Kimberly were REALLY popular in NJ/PA in our time. We were the Ashleys/Brittanys of the 70s/80s.
I'm about the same age as Allison, but her mother who should be slightly younger than mine is written as so very old. Not just because of her ... problem ... but her hair, makeup, etc seems more of my grandmothers' styles. I don't know why she'd be some sort of Meghan Draper wife when she came of age much later than that.
And her mother managed to solve her lifelong problem in a few weeks, by the way, without rehab.
I wanted to read more about Allison in rehab. We went from the events surrounding Ellie's birthday and flashed forward to Allison out and living her clean life again.
At the end of the book, how in the hell did they manage to have two separate households in Philadelphia with only Dave working and Allison having blown so much of her own money on pills?
Here on Goodreads, two stars means "it was ok." And there were parts that were very, very good. I found her scenes with Dave heartwrenching, and her aching for how they used to be punched me in the gut. But the book was about 85% a leadup to rehab, and 10% what happened afterward. That 85% was very redundant.
Disclaimer: I grew up in Cherry Hill, NJ and still live in the area. I experienced a great amount of schadenfreude at Allison's descent because I would have gone to high school with her hoity-toity, nose-job-at-16 self.
This...this is what most of the women I know do every day, except those women actually have to leave the house to go to work and have to do more than 500 words. But fine, I'll suspend my disbelief a bit and go with the idea that Allison is a special snowflake.
By the way, this isn't Allison's fault. Her newspaper reporter husband got a book advance and then made her leave Philadelphia to live in a McMansion! And then her blog was discovered and she was hired as a writer and made so much money! And she has to take her child to school!
My gripes:
Spoiler
Here on Goodreads, two stars means "it was ok." And there were parts that were very, very good. I found her scenes with Dave heartwrenching, and her aching for how they used to be punched me in the gut. But the book was about 85% a leadup to rehab, and 10% what happened afterward. That 85% was very redundant.
Disclaimer: I grew up in Cherry Hill, NJ and still live in the area. I experienced a great amount of schadenfreude at Allison's descent because I would have gone to high school with her hoity-toity, nose-job-at-16 self.
Allison Weiss keeps it all together. She writes a highly successful blog, mothers an incredibly difficult toddler, and wears the brave face of a wife who fears her husband is cheating. Yes, Allison keeps it all together - with the help of an ever increasing regimen of prescription drugs. While she may appear like Wonder Woman, she is slowly developing an addiction that is headed out of control. Can she maintain her high-wire act, or is it merely a matter of time before she takes a dizzying tumble.
Jennifer Weiner's All Fall Down has nearly as many laughs as Allison has pills, or difficulties. But given the serious subject, Weiner has tempered her depiction of Allison so that she isn't just a joke. She's a real woman with a terribly serious problem, and the serious side comes through beautifully. One of the most enjoyable books I read this year, I highly recommend it for anyone.
Jennifer Weiner's All Fall Down has nearly as many laughs as Allison has pills, or difficulties. But given the serious subject, Weiner has tempered her depiction of Allison so that she isn't just a joke. She's a real woman with a terribly serious problem, and the serious side comes through beautifully. One of the most enjoyable books I read this year, I highly recommend it for anyone.
Weiner's humor and storytelling are evident in this novel with a serious topic, addiction. Allison is a suburban wife and mother, appearing to have it all, until she turns to prescription pills to face her life. I would have liked Allison's character to come to the addiction realization a little earlier in the book, but the story is an important one. Coping with life's everyday challenges can easily lead to the wrong choices. Allison faces her demons and challenges herself to start again.
I liked parts of this very much but a lot of it felt not quite right. I'm no addiction expert but it felt very much like a generic, lifetime movie version of a story of addiction.
And while I definitely didn't want to read 100 pages of Allison in rehab, the ending felt like it was just thrown on the end and tied up with a pretty bow.
And while I definitely didn't want to read 100 pages of Allison in rehab, the ending felt like it was just thrown on the end and tied up with a pretty bow.