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.
jennyshank's review
3.0
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/books/20130111-book-review-she-matters-a-life-in-friendships-by-susanna-sonnenberg.ece
She Matters
A Life in Friendships
Susanna Sonnenberg
(Scribner, $24)
By JENNY SHANK Special Contributor
Published: 11 January 2013 06:44 PM
Susanna Sonnenberg’s 2008 memoir Her Last Death detailed her Manhattan childhood with an extravagant, inappropriate and singularly crazy mother who followed “cocaine-fierce days” with “sluggish comas on the bed.”
She escaped her mother’s orbit, moving to Missoula to marry, work and raise two sons. In She Matters: A Life in Friendships, Sonnenberg chronicles the female friendships that sustained and challenged her in ways that are particularly acute due to her lack of a steady maternal figure.
Sonnenberg’s mother makes only a cameo appearance in She Matters, but it’s a telling one. “My mother always had a main best friend,” Sonnenberg writes, “a passionate, sudden sister who’d last a year, maybe.”
Although the Internet now makes it possible to maintain friendships that might have naturally sloughed off, Sonnenberg, like her mother, has a knack for forcing friendships to their conclusion. Her vivid prose is confessional and precise; she tackles her friendships with the same forcefulness, making a “sudden sister” out of women who often reject her when marriage, children or other obligations claim their time or when they change, no longer welcoming her bawdy conversation. One asks her, “Why are you sitting here, Susanna, telling me this, this, this unattractive story?”
Sonnenberg’s intensity might be rough on friendships, but it makes for charged storytelling. The essays each detail a different friend or two, such as her elementary school chums Jenny and Gwen, who provide sweet solace from her disordered home. “Each girl was a jewel,” she writes, “a clue that it was possible to have no drama at all. Boredom, they showed me, was an important form of love.”
After Jenny and Gwen leave the scene, however, there’s not much boredom in She Matters. In “The Root Cellar,” Sonnenberg mentions how she began sleeping with her English teacher at boarding school in Colorado at 16, never telling her best friend Claudia, at his creepy insistence. “You’re involved in something now she will not understand,” he told her.
After graduation, Sonnenberg flies back to Colorado and finds Claudia, who has just had an abortion, shacked up with an unappealing, doobie-smoking man at least twice her age, who inhabits a soil-floored root cellar like a misbegotten Hobbit. Sonnenberg wants to tell Claudia to leave him, but cannot, given her ongoing trysts with Professor Molester and her failure to be honest about them.
In She Matters, Sonnenberg continues writing with the sexual frankness that characterized Her Last Death — although late in the book, she confesses adultery to her husband, resulting in a “marriage reimagined and reshaped,” but offers no specifics about what this arrangement might be. It feels prurient to ask for more on this subject, but hey, she’s the one who has been so unstinting up to this moment. Perhaps Sonnenberg is saving that story for a subsequent book.
Despite its rampant drama, there are plenty of insights in She Matters even for those who tend to maintain friendships with the loyal and mellow geniality of a Labrador. For example, when Claudia’s father dies, Sonnenberg doesn’t really understand her grief. “Had I paid attention,” she writes, “she would have shown me a first real lesson about grief, its disorganizing confusions, its inescapable solitude.”
Later in the book, Sonnenberg writes of her own father’s devastating death. Connie, an impressive friend who has written plays, essays and screenplays that earned a “Tony nomination, esteemed prizes and Pulitzer consideration,” happened to be there for Sonnenberg the day her father died. Connie was not Sonnenberg’s closest friend, but she was a vital one.
Although most people’s friendship histories are tamer than Sonnenberg’s, She Matters will set them to remembering, and perhaps to calling an old, once-inseparable pal.
Jenny Shank’s first novel, The Ringer, won the High Plains Book Award.
She Matters
A Life in Friendships
Susanna Sonnenberg
(Scribner, $24)
By JENNY SHANK Special Contributor
Published: 11 January 2013 06:44 PM
Susanna Sonnenberg’s 2008 memoir Her Last Death detailed her Manhattan childhood with an extravagant, inappropriate and singularly crazy mother who followed “cocaine-fierce days” with “sluggish comas on the bed.”
She escaped her mother’s orbit, moving to Missoula to marry, work and raise two sons. In She Matters: A Life in Friendships, Sonnenberg chronicles the female friendships that sustained and challenged her in ways that are particularly acute due to her lack of a steady maternal figure.
Sonnenberg’s mother makes only a cameo appearance in She Matters, but it’s a telling one. “My mother always had a main best friend,” Sonnenberg writes, “a passionate, sudden sister who’d last a year, maybe.”
Although the Internet now makes it possible to maintain friendships that might have naturally sloughed off, Sonnenberg, like her mother, has a knack for forcing friendships to their conclusion. Her vivid prose is confessional and precise; she tackles her friendships with the same forcefulness, making a “sudden sister” out of women who often reject her when marriage, children or other obligations claim their time or when they change, no longer welcoming her bawdy conversation. One asks her, “Why are you sitting here, Susanna, telling me this, this, this unattractive story?”
Sonnenberg’s intensity might be rough on friendships, but it makes for charged storytelling. The essays each detail a different friend or two, such as her elementary school chums Jenny and Gwen, who provide sweet solace from her disordered home. “Each girl was a jewel,” she writes, “a clue that it was possible to have no drama at all. Boredom, they showed me, was an important form of love.”
After Jenny and Gwen leave the scene, however, there’s not much boredom in She Matters. In “The Root Cellar,” Sonnenberg mentions how she began sleeping with her English teacher at boarding school in Colorado at 16, never telling her best friend Claudia, at his creepy insistence. “You’re involved in something now she will not understand,” he told her.
After graduation, Sonnenberg flies back to Colorado and finds Claudia, who has just had an abortion, shacked up with an unappealing, doobie-smoking man at least twice her age, who inhabits a soil-floored root cellar like a misbegotten Hobbit. Sonnenberg wants to tell Claudia to leave him, but cannot, given her ongoing trysts with Professor Molester and her failure to be honest about them.
In She Matters, Sonnenberg continues writing with the sexual frankness that characterized Her Last Death — although late in the book, she confesses adultery to her husband, resulting in a “marriage reimagined and reshaped,” but offers no specifics about what this arrangement might be. It feels prurient to ask for more on this subject, but hey, she’s the one who has been so unstinting up to this moment. Perhaps Sonnenberg is saving that story for a subsequent book.
Despite its rampant drama, there are plenty of insights in She Matters even for those who tend to maintain friendships with the loyal and mellow geniality of a Labrador. For example, when Claudia’s father dies, Sonnenberg doesn’t really understand her grief. “Had I paid attention,” she writes, “she would have shown me a first real lesson about grief, its disorganizing confusions, its inescapable solitude.”
Later in the book, Sonnenberg writes of her own father’s devastating death. Connie, an impressive friend who has written plays, essays and screenplays that earned a “Tony nomination, esteemed prizes and Pulitzer consideration,” happened to be there for Sonnenberg the day her father died. Connie was not Sonnenberg’s closest friend, but she was a vital one.
Although most people’s friendship histories are tamer than Sonnenberg’s, She Matters will set them to remembering, and perhaps to calling an old, once-inseparable pal.
Jenny Shank’s first novel, The Ringer, won the High Plains Book Award.
kermittuesday's review
3.0
I'm trying to separate the actual book from the hype I heard about it, but it's hard. I expected a book about the fortifying nature of female friendships, but most of the stories were about disagreements and friendships that didn't last. I don't think a friendship needs to last to be valuable, but that didn't seem to be the focus. I don't know, Sonneberg writes well, maybe it just wasn't my thing.
shannonrkline's review
4.0
Really enjoyed the writing and the insight, but wouldn't personally want to be friends with the author. ;) This book did inspire me to reflect on my female relationships and how I can be a better friend. I'll be thinking about this one for awhile. (Thanks for the gift, Kirby!)
chantaldjohnson's review
3.0
I felt conflicted after I finished this essay style tell-all from Sonnenberg about her past female friendships. While I devoured her writing, which I thought was open, honest, and even dangerous, this book ended up not being what I'd hoped it been. Which I think actually ended up being a good thing. She Matters doesn't offer the cookie cutter version of female friendship that is often portrayed. It's so raw that it often made me uncomfortable. Sonnenberg is about 25 years older than me, so I've had a lot less life experience. So reading all of the stories was interesting to me and also eye opening. However, I was rubbed the wrong way several times. I can't relate to not having parents that weren't there for me, and the complicated relationship with her mother definitely affected her for the worse. But I just couldn't deal with so many of the failed friendships. Once someone changed or stopped being what she needed them to be, she fled immediately. Which is brave to admit, but kind of shitty. I'm not knocking her for who she is because all of us are flawed humans. I just found it hard to relate, especially since I tend to try to be equal in my friendships and definitely give more. She would say how she liked to provide protection for her friends but then would always act like a little girl when they couldn't be there for her. Which again I'm sure ties back to her relationship with her mother. I think I'd be interested in reading her memoir. While this book has some pretty amazing writing--the last chapters where she deals with her father's death were incredibly written--I didn't take away much from it, unfortunately. Other than the fact that friends come and go all the time and we as women have to work harder to retain and maintain the good ones.