This was the first celebrity memoir and only the third or fourth memoir at large I’ve ever read so I don’t have many comparisons to set a standard. But I can say I was fairly moved by this book. Julia Fox’s pervasive voice coats every page—alternately unique and off-putting. At points the sentences were a bit rambling and repetitive + I don’t know that I can give the book points for writerly style. However, I don’t know that I was actually in it for the style. I, like many others, read this book to get a taste of the drAma. And what I found myself enjoying most was the air of transparency and openness that Julia cultivated. Instead of prevaricating, over-explaining, or (largely) apologizing for her past actions, she merely created a list of events; shifting her voice to fit all her past selves and noting what she’d felt at the time. I have to admire her for this unapologetic (and frankly quite brave) vulnerability. Every time a woman writes and profits off of a book that includes her past sufferings there seems to be a lot of hand wringing about whether she has been over-dramatic, whether she has romanticized things. Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House comes to mind. But in both Machado and Fox’s cases, there were never any explicit promises regarding their complete, scientific, unembellished honesty. We read both women’s stories because they intrigued us and were presented to us as works of art. Neither they nor their stories have to represent some universal standard for future generations. And while Fox is certainly not as experienced a writer, I can’t say I have any complaints regarding potential glossing over, inflating, romanticizing, or general primping of events. As Fox mentions in the very pages of this book, she made her artistic debut by literally selling her own image! And she is still doing it today. We wanted her story and we got it—probably, mostly, maybe warts and all.
