Reviews

Jell-O Girls: A Family History by Allie Rowbottom

kaitlinmcnabb's review

4.0

This was above all a beautiful tribute to the author's mother.
Together, this was a fascinating blend of history, feminism, family, and America. There was no forced narrative only, really, America revealing itself through Jell-o and its family.

kharri815's review

5.0

An un-put-downable family memoir of three generations of women, interwoven with Jell-O history, feminist theory, talk therapy, and more.

hiley's review

slow-paced

3.5

listened to the audio book but would definitely recommend reading instead. the writing is very beautiful & the story was very interesting, I regret not having the full grasp on this book which I would have been closer to had I read a physical copy

thisislizwa's review

5.0

I absolutely loved "Sweet and Low: A Family Story" and was hoping that this book would be along the same lines... (something about a multi-generation family biography combined with the saga of a widely successful food brand makes such a compelling read!) "Jello-O Girls" far exceeded my expectations and is really a beautifully written story of mothers and daughters with splashes of women's studies and food history. I read the whole thing in one plane ride and look forward to see what Allie Rowbottom writes next!

* Oh, and my vegan pals will be pleased to know that the animal cruelty involved in the production of gelatin is indeed acknowledged.

bookish_nel's review

2.0

I got to about page 100, and the book just wasn’t for me. The women in the family are immensely privileged, which is mentioned at some points. There are some truly traumatic events that occur within the lives of these women, but I can’t help thinking how much worse it would be to endure these events as a woman of color, a poor woman, a lesbian/bi/queer woman, a trans woman, or a non-binary person. The bulk of the book is dedicated to how difficult these women had it bc of the patriarchy. It’s also discussed at length how unfulfilled one woman is being a housewife. I can definitely see how it might not be fulfilling to some!! However, many people didn’t even have the option whether or not to stay home—many were doing domestic labor for other families. Like my mom for instance. However, my opinion is VERY colored by my personal past. My mother had the same disease when I was young and worked as a housekeeper. She’s doing great today, but it wasn’t because of a curse that she got cancer. It was genetics. We were privileged—my dad’s health insurance was in place as a safety net, we had access to healthcare, we were a working class white family in Iowa. I don’t want to minimize other people’s experiences. I can’t finish the book without my personal feelings getting in the way.

But I do really like Jell-O.

laurennporter's review

emotional informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

lilraesn's review against another edition

4.0

I went into this book thinking it would be a dry memoir about theJell-O family, but was pleasantly surprised by how good of a book this was (pro tip: read it, don’t listen to it on audio). Yes, it’s primarily a family memoir, but it is so richly written that it reads like a novel. I love the bits about the history of Jell-O itself in its larger cultural context and the idea of its role in enforcing a patriarchal structure (even if it’s a bit of a stretch, I loved it nonetheless). Be forewarned: there is medically/anatomically graphic sections that made my skin crawl like I was actually there.

ramonamead's review

2.0

There were parts of I found extremely interesting, and others that were confusing and/or unnecessary. The overall feel of the book is choppy. It's clear that the author had a lot of different threads she tried to weave together. It works in a few spots but overall leaves the reader feeling scattered and disconnected from the material and characters.

This is part family memoir, part history of Jello, and part commentary on sexism and the power of the patriarchy. I most enjoyed learning about Jello's role in American culture throughout the decades. The connection between Jello's story and the author's family is there, but seems she could have made it stronger.

The book should have had pictures. There are many times the author describes a Jello advertisement or her family photos. Trying to visualize what she's describing took me out of the story. Photos would have been fun, broke up the text, and emphasized the points the author was trying to make.

toryhallelujah's review

1.0

Okay, so supposedly there's this curse on the family that owns the Jell-O copyright. Creepy! The men in the family all die because of...well, money? Like, they marry gold-diggers and then end up broke and commit suicide. Alrighty, sounds like less of a curse than just poor choices, but okay. Except the mother of the author of this book decides that SHE is going to be the first WOMAN that the curse affects. She's got a bad feeling about it or something. And then she gets cancer! A lot of cancer! All the time! ...but is that the curse? Because I thought money was the curse? No, no, the curse is SCARY CHEMICALS from JELL-O that CAUSES CANCER. But also it's the PATRIARCHY, forcing women into the kitchens to make Jell-O for their families, and the enforced silence of these women METASTASIZES INTO CANCER.

Lololololololol this book seriously needed to decide WHAT the curse really was. Because it started off as money, and then became THE PATRIARCHY, and CANCER, and CHEMICALS (ooooooh super spoopy chemicals). Whatever. Pretty damn weaksauce. (And you are not scaring me away from my damn Jell-O. Everything will give you cancer. That's life.)

celebrationofbooks's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective slow-paced

4.25

I’ve been in a bit of a book-finishing rut for the past month and a half. All year I’d been flying through books and then, as soon as my grandmother got sick and passed away, I haven’t wanted to touch a book. Until now. Part of getting back to my normal life it seems must include reading (which is very logical given my occupation, I just hadn’t felt like opening a book), and these days, reading means primarily nonfiction. It’s been a year of my near complete lack of interest in fiction and YA (my two staples for the past two decades), so when book club finally veered back to nonfiction, I was thrilled – I hadn’t actually finished a new book club book since, uh, January 2017.

If I were to write a memoir, it would be a lot like Jell-O Girls. The publisher summary doesn’t exactly capture the spirit of the memoir – it sensationalizes it more than needed. Allie Rowbottom faces an interesting inheritance – money from Jell-O which supported her artist mother her entire life, and a “curse” so to speak, which is basically her family trying to find a source of blame for poor genes. I was intrigued when I picked it up, and it held me captivated until I finished it – in 48 hours. And then I went to log it in Goodreads and see what other people thought about it. Oh boy.

I need to start holding off on looking a Goodreads reviews until I’ve finished a book. I adored Jell-O Girls and thought it one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. It seems, however, I am in the minority when it comes to most readers and I think that there are two primary reasons for this. Firstly, the integration of the Jell-O story with that of Allie’s family doesn’t always work particularly well. It’s nice, and a refreshing interlude at times, to see how Jell-O has changed over the years, but it really has very little to do with Allie, her mother Mary, and her grandmother, Midge, our three female protagonists of the memoir. Second, if you’ve never experienced any of the traumatic events and family situations the main characters experienced, it can be easy to discount them as Rich White People Problems, as most people in my book club, and on the interwebs of Goodreads, seemed to do.

Those two things considered, as someone who has been the primary caretaker to a family member slowly dying of cancer, just lost her grandmother, has had to handle the fact that her mother will most likely die of cancer given that she’s already a three-time survivor, whose parents are divorced, whose family has a long history of mental illness, when you’ve struggled with anorexia nervosa and developed OCD tendencies, passed out and not remembered the last time you ate because you couldn’t control anything in your life except what you ate, well. You could say Allie’s Jell-O Girls is the story of me and my mother’s family.

We’re all a little crazy, humanity proves this. And when you’ve experienced very similar situations to Allie and you want to convey just how magnificently she captures the feeling of waiting for hours on end in the surgical waiting room that you struggled for years to find words to describe, you want to share that with people. You want to talk about just how important this book is to you, not just because you think it’s good, but because it let you know that you are far from alone. That other people have experienced the same set of traumas, self-inflicted and otherwise, that you have. That it’s okay to feel like you’re losing your mind and that you are not alone.

Despite working in a bookstore and talking about books for a living and recommending countless books to people over the last few years, I don’t actually have the chance to sit down and talk about books in detail with many people. I get to give people my thirty-second elevator pitch on a book and hope they’ll buy it. And part of the success of the store I work at is that all of the employees have their own genres of interest – Su reads things dark and twisty, Pam reads contemporary women’s and historical fiction, Mary reads commercial nonfiction and fiction, Jennifer is our children’s buyer and can tell you anything and everything about all the picture books on the shelves, Kaz specializes in LGBT literature, PK reads business and history, Hadley reads the little known random books published by small, academic and indie presses, Staci reads just like my mom, thrillers and mysteries from Baldacci to Scottoline, and I read a little bit of everything in between. There’s not a whole lot of overlap. Therefore, enter book club – the perfect opportunity to discuss books with (mostly) like-minded individuals.

I love Jell-O Girls. In my 29 years of existence and of the 220 books I’ve read since I started working at the bookstore in 2015, it is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I don’t care if the rest of the world disagrees with me. I will praise it for handling life situations that so many people find difficult to talk about. So please, ignore the plethora of poor ratings on websites. Ratings don’t capture the spirit of the book. If you think reading this book would benefit you, your family, please. Take a look at it.