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A review by yikesbmg
No One Tells You This by Glynnis MacNicol
4.0
This book starts off a little slow, then really picks up, then gets shaky for a solid chapter, and then somewhat regains it’s balance.
I’ll start with the good: it is absolutely refreshing to read an account of how frustrating and hard and sad caregiving of those that once cared for you can be. MacNicol’s writing when it comes to the changes she saw her mother, the hassle it was to provide sufficient support, and then having to grapple with the consequences/release that occurs after the support is secured was honest, raw, and really moving. I think she writes about friendships between folks in different life stages in a really important and interesting way that helped me reflect and grow, which I am grateful for. The book is a really amazing read about all the options that can open up if you chose not to go the marriage and kids routes, all the responsibilities that still remain once you make that decision, and the insecurities/conversations you will continue to navigate when you go against the grain.
The bad: MacNicol spends a lot of time detailing her life in New York City which TBH isn’t that interesting or remarkable. She moved here in her 20s, waitressed, became a writer and started her own business with a friend. Sometimes she gets too bogged down in the details of her relatively standard experience living in New York, which got boring kind of quickly for me.
For most of the book, the reader knows MacNicol is a white woman operating in a white circle of friends. She doesn’t say it out right, but it’s obvious. It bothered me that she didn’t specifically address the role her race played out in her experience in NYC or Wyoming, but it really drove me crazy that she decides to tackle it as a way to mark time when she mentions how Sandra Bland was killed while she (MacNicol) was doing a cross country road trip. It is clear to the reader throughout the book that MacNicol mentions certain news events as a way to mark time throughout the book, but instead of mentioning Bland and moving on, she messily uses it to, in my opinion, quickly address her privilege as a white woman in a few pages and go. She talks about how she is safe on her road trip trip because she is white, and then sloppily mentions how her childhood heroes made history through systems that violently erased Black and native peoples. The whole chapter read poorly to me, and knocked the book off course in an unhelpful and uninteresting ways
It annoyed the shit out of me that she kept referring to herself as a New Yorker especially because half of the story is about how she grew up in Canada/has to keep returning to it, and how she feels super limited in New York. Maybe she kept asserting it to demonstrate the gravity of what it means in the end, when she feels less tethered to the City? I dunno but it felt like she kept trying to assert and identity wasn’t necessary (she could have simply say I felt comfortable and most at home in New York) so it really got on my nerves.
I’ll start with the good: it is absolutely refreshing to read an account of how frustrating and hard and sad caregiving of those that once cared for you can be. MacNicol’s writing when it comes to the changes she saw her mother, the hassle it was to provide sufficient support, and then having to grapple with the consequences/release that occurs after the support is secured was honest, raw, and really moving. I think she writes about friendships between folks in different life stages in a really important and interesting way that helped me reflect and grow, which I am grateful for. The book is a really amazing read about all the options that can open up if you chose not to go the marriage and kids routes, all the responsibilities that still remain once you make that decision, and the insecurities/conversations you will continue to navigate when you go against the grain.
The bad: MacNicol spends a lot of time detailing her life in New York City which TBH isn’t that interesting or remarkable. She moved here in her 20s, waitressed, became a writer and started her own business with a friend. Sometimes she gets too bogged down in the details of her relatively standard experience living in New York, which got boring kind of quickly for me.
For most of the book, the reader knows MacNicol is a white woman operating in a white circle of friends. She doesn’t say it out right, but it’s obvious. It bothered me that she didn’t specifically address the role her race played out in her experience in NYC or Wyoming, but it really drove me crazy that she decides to tackle it as a way to mark time when she mentions how Sandra Bland was killed while she (MacNicol) was doing a cross country road trip. It is clear to the reader throughout the book that MacNicol mentions certain news events as a way to mark time throughout the book, but instead of mentioning Bland and moving on, she messily uses it to, in my opinion, quickly address her privilege as a white woman in a few pages and go. She talks about how she is safe on her road trip trip because she is white, and then sloppily mentions how her childhood heroes made history through systems that violently erased Black and native peoples. The whole chapter read poorly to me, and knocked the book off course in an unhelpful and uninteresting ways
It annoyed the shit out of me that she kept referring to herself as a New Yorker especially because half of the story is about how she grew up in Canada/has to keep returning to it, and how she feels super limited in New York. Maybe she kept asserting it to demonstrate the gravity of what it means in the end, when she feels less tethered to the City? I dunno but it felt like she kept trying to assert and identity wasn’t necessary (she could have simply say I felt comfortable and most at home in New York) so it really got on my nerves.