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colleengeedrumm's review
3.0
The arsenic hour = not yet dinnertime, the house filled with doom and shrieks.
Stella Artois mixed with lemonade
Don't confuse your men.
I didn't want to be told that unconscious anxiety dictated my choices.
Anguish and real rejection, Bert and I found, fed intimacy far better than worship had.
Just let her be what she needs to be, I thought, a discipline I was trying to practice with everyone, and with myself.
Yes, our history, I'd thought, our knowing through all those years, knowing everything that happened, and with whom, and which challenges changed us. That's not a small thing.
Safety sensitive = introvert
To Christopher I pretended the episode was over, the sour memory the only remains, but I still felt the muscular truth, the places in my body that had held, had fought, had released. I always felt them.
She loved to see "the beautiful, drenched place that you are in, in bed and at the desk, which as we know are inseparable." As we know.
The comfort of not being comforted.
Stella Artois mixed with lemonade
Don't confuse your men.
I didn't want to be told that unconscious anxiety dictated my choices.
Anguish and real rejection, Bert and I found, fed intimacy far better than worship had.
Just let her be what she needs to be, I thought, a discipline I was trying to practice with everyone, and with myself.
Yes, our history, I'd thought, our knowing through all those years, knowing everything that happened, and with whom, and which challenges changed us. That's not a small thing.
Safety sensitive = introvert
To Christopher I pretended the episode was over, the sour memory the only remains, but I still felt the muscular truth, the places in my body that had held, had fought, had released. I always felt them.
She loved to see "the beautiful, drenched place that you are in, in bed and at the desk, which as we know are inseparable." As we know.
The comfort of not being comforted.
labunnywtf's review
3.0
Let's start out by saying that I genuinely hate the way Susanna Sonnenberg writes. Hate this style, hate her voice.
Moving past that. I'm of two minds about my feelings for the people she describes in each chapter. I would not want to be friends with her myself. Nor, really, would I want to be friends with the majority of the people she was friends with. A few exceptions, like Adele. None of these people seem like good friends, Susanna included.
However.
I wonder to myself if my intense reactions say more about myself than them. Because I did, every 50 or so pages, identify with one or the other, either Susanna or the friend in question.
So, am I violently disliking them because I see in their actions something in myself? This thought kept creeping into my head with each flash of annoyance.
So this book gets three stars for getting my brain going, which is always, to me, the sign of a good book.
Moving past that. I'm of two minds about my feelings for the people she describes in each chapter. I would not want to be friends with her myself. Nor, really, would I want to be friends with the majority of the people she was friends with. A few exceptions, like Adele. None of these people seem like good friends, Susanna included.
However.
I wonder to myself if my intense reactions say more about myself than them. Because I did, every 50 or so pages, identify with one or the other, either Susanna or the friend in question.
So, am I violently disliking them because I see in their actions something in myself? This thought kept creeping into my head with each flash of annoyance.
So this book gets three stars for getting my brain going, which is always, to me, the sign of a good book.
mawalker1962's review
3.0
Some of the chapters were compelling; others not so much. Maybe it's just that the dynamics of some of her friendships were hard for me to relate to.
steph_davidson's review
4.0
#67. Difficult and beautiful, often at the same time. I recommend small bites spread out over time. As others have said, the chapters are really stand-alone essays, so it's not necessary to retain a lot of memory from chapter to chapter. I found it painful and cringe-y, and found the lack of introspection about her boundaries and/or sexuality disappointing.
alisa4books's review
2.0
Unending stories of friendships where the author points out all her failures. Tedious.
jaclynday's review
3.0
Sonnenberg is a good writer, linking together stories of her female friendships from childhood to the present day. She describes her friends lushly and her interactions with them on the page do seem true to life. The book is not compelling—it’s hard to make essays like this into a larger picture for reader…but she tries. The momentum wasn’t there for me, but I didn’t NOT enjoy reading it. It’s very intimate and occasionally raw. Her descriptions of friendships breaking down or sputtering to a stop are usually not flattering to her or the friend or both. (I wonder what they think of this book.) Sonnenberg, to her credit, owns her neediness (something that comes through a lot) and her occasionally harsh treatment of friends. I didn’t find her unlikable, but I didn’t get very invested in her or her story either. If you like memoirs about friendship(s), you’d probably enjoy this book. Otherwise? Life is too short for a meh book.
margaret_adams's review
A collection of stories about female friendships that vacillates between brutal honesty and cringe-worthy internalized misogyny. Good prose that was a bit ruined for me by the self-absorption of the otherwise astute narrator. I wondered what the assembly line of other women experienced of these friendships, and wondered at the apparent lack of interest the the narrator had in that question.