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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.)
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.
rainbowbookworm's review
3.0
The author's mother had started a memoir about her childhood and her family's curse. Unfortunately, she died of cancer before it was completed. Rowbottom's book is a tribute to her mother and her family's heritage, but it is not fully developed and leaves readers wanting more.
mohawkm's review
4.0
A very interesting family history, strung throughout with metaphors and a deeply feminist eye. I recommend it as a companion to the fictional "The Fever", as the case of the LeRoy Conversion Disorder outbreak plays a role here as well. Note that the author performs the audiobook, and is a fairly dry reader, although the material is interesting enough and the writing good enough to get past it.
thatkeeginlady's review
4.0
I was sick at home and ended up reading the entire book in one afternoon. I really got into it and the stories of three generations of women, their struggles and stories. Really enjoyed it and now I want some Jell-O.
kristio114's review
3.0
The feminist message in this book was powerful, but the story was not at all what I was expecting. I thought it might be more about the history of Jello, and while there was some of that in here, it’s truly more of a story about one woman’s journey to discover her agency in a world where women are often labeled crazy or emotional or hysterical, and then dismissed. Her descriptions of her mother’s and grandmother’s lives and the devastating impacts that society’s silencing of women had on them was heartbreaking, but helps demonstrate that this isn’t just a problem that we face today. I liked how she reinforced the message throughout the story that despite all the trauma the world inflicts on women as a gender, we are powerful and deserve to make our voices heard.
ssejig's review
2.0
I heard about this book on a couple of different book podcasts and was delighted to see that it was still available as an ARC on NetGalley. I immediately started reading it and then... about a month passed. This book just didn't capture me like I thought it would. A history of the family behind Jello, one that is cursed? Cool. But, tbh, even with the Jello hook, this book just didn't capture my imagination. I did slog through it but it took a long time.
michgraham2019's review
4.0
Jell-O Girls is not just a book about the history of the jiggly snack we all expected to see in our lunch boxes between the ages of six and ten. It is the quiet story of the women of the Jell-o empire, and the patriarchal structure that oppressed them through the generations. Rowbottom uses "the family curse" as a vehicle for describing hardships such as abuse, abandonment, and mental and physical illness. Sprinkled throughout with historical insertions about Jell-O, this book is one part history, one part memoir, and on part examination and self reflection of a family burdened by wealth and all that comes with it.
jesslane88's review
1.0
This is less about the history of Jello and the struggles of feminism and more about the many woes of a wealthy and destructive family. Blaming all misfortune on a "curse" and the patriarchy came across as dull and self indulgent. I found myself rolling my eyes more often than not. I had to skim the last 50+ pages. The writing was repetitive and lacked self awareness. No recommendation from me.