martynahanna's review against another edition
3.0
Jan SheReads Bookclub read. Very compelling in the weirdest way, like watching a car crash - you know what’s coming, but you can’t look away. In this case, it’s the author’s affair with an oil rig worker. Despite what this book supposedly isn’t (a story about men working on oil rigs, with no women around) - I have developed an understanding with and a fascination of life on the oil rigs. We do love a genre challenge!
lillulu's review against another edition
3.0
Maybe in another world we would get a longer, more in-depth version of this story that would delve into the emotional and socio-economic issues at the heart of this memoir, but this isn’t that. It’s a shame because it seems that the author had enough content to write a much more lengthy and complete narrative, but decided against it.
rick2's review against another edition
2.0
False pretext. This is a coming of age, finding yourself memoir masquerading as a sociological study. As a sociological study it’s not good. As a memoir it’s middling to ok.
I wanted to read a good literary nonfiction book about what this book ostensibly proposes to be about, masculinity and oil rig workers. I imagined maybe a George Orwell esque, Road to Wigan Pier, perhaps a sort of sexed up ethnography about this topic.
Instead, this is essentially Eat Pray Love among the oilfield workers where the author finds herself by making bad decisions with a married man and journeys around commentating on things, less so on the overall dynamic, and more on how she feels about it. Which is an acceptable type of book, just not not what I was looking for.
The writing is decent. Content was frustrating.
I wanted to read a good literary nonfiction book about what this book ostensibly proposes to be about, masculinity and oil rig workers. I imagined maybe a George Orwell esque, Road to Wigan Pier, perhaps a sort of sexed up ethnography about this topic.
Instead, this is essentially Eat Pray Love among the oilfield workers where the author finds herself by making bad decisions with a married man and journeys around commentating on things, less so on the overall dynamic, and more on how she feels about it. Which is an acceptable type of book, just not not what I was looking for.
The writing is decent. Content was frustrating.