Take a photo of a barcode or cover
msmichaela's Reviews (546)
I think it's a sign of a promising memoir that I wanted more - lots more - from Caitlin Shetterly's tale of, as the subtitle says, "Going west, going broke, finding home" during the 2008-2009 recession. As she often was in her relationship column for the Portland Phoenix, Shetterly is quite frank about the circumstances in which she and husband Dan find themselves as the economy craters, their jobs falter and Caitlin is overcome with crippling nausea from her pregnancy with their unplanned first child.
However, the memoir feels as though it was hastily assembled - as I believe it was - from Shetterly's blog posts and the radio diaries she recorded for NPR. I wanted more detail about their finances - just how dire were they, really? - and a stronger sense of the extent to which their families supported them financially. I would've also liked some middle ground - some tales of other people affected by the recession - to give some context and fill in the landscape between Shetterly's narrow depiction of her own experience and her somewhat abstract threads about the collapse of the American dream in general.
However, the memoir feels as though it was hastily assembled - as I believe it was - from Shetterly's blog posts and the radio diaries she recorded for NPR. I wanted more detail about their finances - just how dire were they, really? - and a stronger sense of the extent to which their families supported them financially. I would've also liked some middle ground - some tales of other people affected by the recession - to give some context and fill in the landscape between Shetterly's narrow depiction of her own experience and her somewhat abstract threads about the collapse of the American dream in general.
