Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home

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I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home by Jami Attenberg

10 reviews

cartermon4's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

3.0

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notlikethebeer's review

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adventurous challenging fast-paced

2.25

I'm not going to lie, I didn't really enjoy this. That feels mean and bad to say about a memoir, and especially about a book where I have - admittedly!! - folded down so many corners on so many quotes. It is definitely not without it's moments of beauty, inspiration, use. There were some excellent parts, in particular the very last chapter. However, I found the structure difficult to follow, there was no logical thread and it seemed like a set of disparate essays rather than a cohesive book - with even references to previously-discussed periods being treated in an oddly new way. I spent a lot of the book wondering what the "point" was, when I would finally make some kind of sense of Attenberg's narrative. Then again, I appreciate that she owes us nothing: least of all to provide her own story in any form other than she wishes. However, I think my feelings towards Attenberg are unfortunately underscored by the fact that I just didn't gel with her, or at least the version of herself in this memoir. She just seemed full of complaints for situations she had wilfully chosen. I wanted to shout, don't you know there are people with real problems in this world? And that's not to say that she did not have real problems, of course she did. But so much of it was self-indulgent moaning about non-problems.

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leefox's review

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lighthearted reflective fast-paced

3.0

-good on the sentence level
-easy, flowing reading experience
-lacking narrative arc
-confusing timeline
-fine, kind of boring

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nadia's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

3.25

When I read and loved Born A Crime by Trevor Noah, I realised that you didn't need to know the author of a memoir to enjoy it. However, I do think a combination of me not knowing anything about Jami Attenberg and also listening to this while being tired and not in the mood massively impacted my enjoyment.

It was difficult to piece together a narrative arc, to set the scene, and to understand what Attenberg was hoping the reader would take away from her stories (though I got there by the end). I felt dropped in the middle of her stories and struggled to form an emotional connection with her.

Still, there were some really interesting sections and reflections that did capture my attention despite me being distracted and I appreciated Attenberg's openness and vulnerability surrounding these.

If you're into books about women travelling solo, surviving as a writer, and not giving up in the face of failure or rejection, then this is a great book for you!

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e_tully4's review

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adventurous hopeful reflective medium-paced

5.0

I always give memoirs 5 stars, thanks to writers for sharing their lives with us.

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skeltzer's review

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reflective medium-paced

3.0

I agree with the folks who said this was good on a sentence level. She wrote some lovely, reflective sentences. But I found myself quite bored with this book. It was fine.

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sshabein's review

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emotional funny inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

"Every day we sit down to work we swim in a sea of our own fuck-ups. On the shore is one good sentence."

This is a book full of great sentences, thoughts on what it means to live for your creative life, and how one writer found a sense of home for herself. Definitely recommend.

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deedireads's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective medium-paced

4.25

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

First, big thanks to Libro.fm and Harper Audio for the audio review copy of this book! I’d been looking forward to it for a while, because I’m a big fan of Jami Attenberg’s substack newsletter, “Craft Talk,” and her annual 1000 Words of Summer write-a-thon.

I Came All This Way to Meet You is one of my favorite kinds of memoirs: about an ordinary life, made meaningful in the details. There’s no denying that Attenberg is a great writer of words, and it shows here. The book is honest, funny, heartfelt, sincere, and very generous.

I will say that the narration style of the audiobook wasn’t my favorite. (She did not read it herself, FYI.) Some people may prefer it; I think it was meant to be a more expressive style. But for me, I think the intonation distracted a bit from what were, underneath, really resonant and hard-hitting sentences. I may decide to reread a print copy in the future. But the book itself is excellent enough that I really enjoyed it anyway.

Thank you, Jami, for sharing this gift with us.

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emzireads's review

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

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caseythereader's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny reflective fast-paced

4.0

Thanks to Ecco Books and Libro FM for the free advance copy of this book.

- I CAME ALL THIS WAY TO MEET YOU is less a recounting of Attenberg's life, and more a consideration of how she got here and how she became the person she is today - someone fully devoted to art and life and the joy of community.
- I appreciated the exploration of the mental effects of coming up in the art and literature world as a woman, and particularly a woman mostly doing it on her own. She looks at both the joys of going solo and choosing your own path, and the pitfalls and scary moments.

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