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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
If you read this book as fiction, it is the beginnings of story of a wonderfully complex, flawed character that you both hate and root for. If you read it as a memoir…. It’s passable at best. I am a fan of Caroline in the way one is a fan of watching trains crash. I enjoyed this book immensely and wish her the best.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
Moderate: Addiction, Drug use
dark
medium-paced
well this certainly was a book.
i pre-ordered this in 2020 and had honestly given up hope that it was ever going to arrive until lo, it did. the book came in its sticker covered turquoise bubble mailer but on opening said package the book was dented and the hand glued endpapers were crooked. on the sides with the covers someone has taken blue and red pens to the exposed paper in a bid to make them match and cover up the exposed paper. luxury indeed.
for as salacious as this book thinks it is, it's also incredibly boring at parts. the prose is dense and overstuffed with adjectives and clauses that makes it hard to follow. i found myself having to read back several sections because i got lost in what was essentially a word salad. the vingettes jump around in time and while a non-linear narrative is a perfectly valid literary device, this feels haphazard as we jump from exeter, to new york, to cambridge, to falls church, back to cambridge and so on.
reading this as someone who has kept up with The Lore™ since discovering her through the cut article a lot of the content of the book was familiar to me. i recognised chunks from her now defunct website where she sold her story during COVID. there are lines i've seen her use and nauseum in various captions and interviews. i don't think this story really provided anything new. we have seen this all before. I. saying that, she assumes a lot of prior knowledge and assumes the reader has kept up with The Lore™. i would genuinely be interested to see someone not versed in it try and make sense of it all. she introduces her characters and scandals as if we already know them. for all she can't keep natalie's name out of her mouth, she doesn't do anything to introduce you to her or the article. we get an allusion to her on page 3 as the ex-best friend who wrote a tell all but with no name given. on pg 23 and 13 chapters in we finally have a name go along with it. the article is assumed knowledge. and sure, it's probably fair to assume most people reading this would have some kind of prior knowledge but she doesn't do anything to give us context.
she spends a lot of time telling us about how great a writer she is and does little to show it. there are moments where she has a nice turn of phrase and certain visuals she creates are evocative but a lot of the time what she's writing feels repetitive and oftentimes she includes details that would be better left out. on pg. 31 in chapter 16, she refuses to include the details of natalie's first sexual encounter because she 'can make this story work without them'. why then isn't this same courtesy extended to the inclusion of details on natalie's sexual assault and caroline's subsequent recreation of it with her boyfriend, or the graphic way in which she describes her father's death, or the way in which she talks about her mother's surgeries for her cancer treatment? i can't say. it makes for uncomfortable reading. it's entirely ghoulish. she commodifies these experiences and makes them about her with little self reflection or understanding.
there is much to say about this book and i haven't even touched on a lot of the other criticisms i have but this is already too long. one thing is for sure, a masterpiece it is not. kudos to her for finally finishing the thing even if it was out of spite.
i pre-ordered this in 2020 and had honestly given up hope that it was ever going to arrive until lo, it did. the book came in its sticker covered turquoise bubble mailer but on opening said package the book was dented and the hand glued endpapers were crooked. on the sides with the covers someone has taken blue and red pens to the exposed paper in a bid to make them match and cover up the exposed paper. luxury indeed.
for as salacious as this book thinks it is, it's also incredibly boring at parts. the prose is dense and overstuffed with adjectives and clauses that makes it hard to follow. i found myself having to read back several sections because i got lost in what was essentially a word salad. the vingettes jump around in time and while a non-linear narrative is a perfectly valid literary device, this feels haphazard as we jump from exeter, to new york, to cambridge, to falls church, back to cambridge and so on.
reading this as someone who has kept up with The Lore™ since discovering her through the cut article a lot of the content of the book was familiar to me. i recognised chunks from her now defunct website where she sold her story during COVID. there are lines i've seen her use and nauseum in various captions and interviews. i don't think this story really provided anything new. we have seen this all before. I. saying that, she assumes a lot of prior knowledge and assumes the reader has kept up with The Lore™. i would genuinely be interested to see someone not versed in it try and make sense of it all. she introduces her characters and scandals as if we already know them. for all she can't keep natalie's name out of her mouth, she doesn't do anything to introduce you to her or the article. we get an allusion to her on page 3 as the ex-best friend who wrote a tell all but with no name given. on pg 23 and 13 chapters in we finally have a name go along with it. the article is assumed knowledge. and sure, it's probably fair to assume most people reading this would have some kind of prior knowledge but she doesn't do anything to give us context.
she spends a lot of time telling us about how great a writer she is and does little to show it. there are moments where she has a nice turn of phrase and certain visuals she creates are evocative but a lot of the time what she's writing feels repetitive and oftentimes she includes details that would be better left out. on pg. 31 in chapter 16, she refuses to include the details of natalie's first sexual encounter because she 'can make this story work without them'. why then isn't this same courtesy extended to the inclusion of details on natalie's sexual assault and caroline's subsequent recreation of it with her boyfriend, or the graphic way in which she describes her father's death, or the way in which she talks about her mother's surgeries for her cancer treatment? i can't say. it makes for uncomfortable reading. it's entirely ghoulish. she commodifies these experiences and makes them about her with little self reflection or understanding.
there is much to say about this book and i haven't even touched on a lot of the other criticisms i have but this is already too long. one thing is for sure, a masterpiece it is not. kudos to her for finally finishing the thing even if it was out of spite.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Death of parent, Alcohol
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
She is a goddamn delight of a writer.
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Almost DNF which is insane considering the book is only 160 pages long. Maybe if she spent less time bragging about how good of a writer she is and more time actually writing good prose I would have enjoyed it more. A memoir that begs the reader to pity and adore its author without doing any of the legwork to elicit those emotions. Like the Vanity Fair profile said - she really only has one story to tell; her own. And she’s told us countless times over the last 10 years, so much so that now finally in book form, it’s incredibly underwhelming.