Saturday, November 26, 2016

Abandon MeAbandon Me by Melissa Febos
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It's always so hard for me to "rate" memoirs, because these are people's lives that we are talking about here. And it takes some gut to be so open and honest to many readers about some of your very private experiences. Don't get me wrong, I love memoirs, but I feel like I've read so many of them that I can be picky about which ones I prefer over others.

I found the content is this novel overly sexual. While I'm trying to not judge anyone here, I was personally put off from reading it. Sure, I could appreciate the voice of introspection that the author was putting forth, but there were no transitions from one scene to another. The "chapters" skipped around in timeline, story, and pace. As much as I tried to keep up with it, this memoir just didn't engage me in a way that I would have wanted it to.

Some of the writing felt like "stream of consciousness" and while it makes the appearance be very "raw" it also seems like some of the writing was unedited. On one hand it was extremely fearlessly vulnerable, with the opening of the mental space that the author put us in, I just don't know if I was personally ready to explore those themes in this memoir. There wasn't any clear construction, more freestyle which made it harder to grasp what the point that she was trying to convey.

I didn't feel compelled to pick it up, to continue on reading, but I was intrigued enough to keep on reading. This review seems to be full of contradictions, just as the book seems to be.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.


View all my reviews

No comments:

Post a Comment