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maryquitecontrary_22's review
1.0
Reading this memoir felt like being a therapist across the couch from a self-absorbed, privileged California girl, who blurts out disheveled thoughts and complaints as they come to her. You try to follow her disorganized rants about how awful her life was growing up vacationing and studying in places like Greece and Rome, and how hard it is to date a married man behind his wife's back. She wants you to know she is the victim of drug-addicted, absent parents, while nursing her own love affair with sedatives.
Thank goodness I am not a therapist, and I never should have bought this book.
ysi06's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
really liked this. prose kicks your teeth in. webweaving between mother/father/monster is insane. loved it. fave line: “It doesn’t seem like a crime — but it’s easy to see I was built to love a certain kind of man.”
lorraine87's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction
kangaruthie's review
5.0
Since I was a fan of Stephanie Danler's first novel, Sweetbitter, I was immediately excited to hear her name pop up again. This time, she decided to write a memoir. Stray is divided into three sections to focus on three people in Danler's life who have let her down countless times: her mother, father, and a married man she refers to as "The Monster" whom she had a longtime affair with. Danler recounts the traumas of her life with stark honesty, not shying away from admitting her own mistakes and faults (she recounts a time when she pushed her mother down the stairs, as well as a screaming argument with her sister). She writes with an incredibly matter-of-fact, insightful voice that consistently kept me stopping and rereading.
Some of my favorite, perceptive lines were:
"We don’t receive the things we want because we deserve them. Most of the time we get them because we are blind and lucky. It’s in the act of having, the daily tending, that we have an opportunity to become deserving. It’s not a place to be reached. It is a constant betwixt and between. It’s in that hollow, liminal space that I think—hope?—humility can be achieved."
"Epiphanies aren’t lightning bolts. They are a hummed note, a prayer mumbled constantly, brought to the surface given the right conditions. It’s as if I am always hearing three ways, first shallowly, collecting, then one level deeper as I’m processing, and finally, I am hearing with my body, which is when I’m hearing myself. That’s one way, for me, information combines with experience and becomes knowledge. I wish there were a shortcut."
In the New York Times' review of the book, book critic Hillary Kelly asserts that the main question Danler explores in Stray is, "Am I a victim or a perpetrator? Or: How does a victim become a perpetrator?" As with any good memoir, I think anyone will find aspects of the book to relate to, even without having the exact same life experiences as the author (i.e. abusive parents, having an affair, etc.).
Some of my favorite, perceptive lines were:
"We don’t receive the things we want because we deserve them. Most of the time we get them because we are blind and lucky. It’s in the act of having, the daily tending, that we have an opportunity to become deserving. It’s not a place to be reached. It is a constant betwixt and between. It’s in that hollow, liminal space that I think—hope?—humility can be achieved."
"Epiphanies aren’t lightning bolts. They are a hummed note, a prayer mumbled constantly, brought to the surface given the right conditions. It’s as if I am always hearing three ways, first shallowly, collecting, then one level deeper as I’m processing, and finally, I am hearing with my body, which is when I’m hearing myself. That’s one way, for me, information combines with experience and becomes knowledge. I wish there were a shortcut."
In the New York Times' review of the book, book critic Hillary Kelly asserts that the main question Danler explores in Stray is, "Am I a victim or a perpetrator? Or: How does a victim become a perpetrator?" As with any good memoir, I think anyone will find aspects of the book to relate to, even without having the exact same life experiences as the author (i.e. abusive parents, having an affair, etc.).