spiderfelt's review against another edition
4.0
It takes a certain amount of hubris to write a memoir, whether your a world-famous politician, or 'just a writer/mother/person'. While I understand why a twenty-something who grew up in Brooklyn might say 'what a pointless exercise in navel gazing', I also see an opportunity for a reader to gain some insight into their own experience. Isn't that why we read? Books give us an opportunity to understand others and to understand ourselves. An insight shared by an author might provoke a sudden moment of clarity in a reader. Perhaps the author and her audience shared a similar experience, but the reader had never considered it from that perspective.
While I didn't love Dederer's first book, Poser, her editorial writing asking what we do with the creative work of horrible men (Woody Allen etc...) made me think. I approached this memoir with curiosity. We share some common demographics (white/middle age/middle class/NW born/raised/settled/mother/married) but had different experiences (internal and external) growing up. I'm nothing like Dederer, and I am just like her. She's a good writer who made me think. That's enough.
While I didn't love Dederer's first book, Poser, her editorial writing asking what we do with the creative work of horrible men (Woody Allen etc...) made me think. I approached this memoir with curiosity. We share some common demographics (white/middle age/middle class/NW born/raised/settled/mother/married) but had different experiences (internal and external) growing up. I'm nothing like Dederer, and I am just like her. She's a good writer who made me think. That's enough.
journey_keeper's review against another edition
4.0
There was a moment where I wanted to put the book down. It seemed whiny, and the writer’s inability to get herself out of her muck didn’t do anything for me. I mean, there should be a point where all face ourselves and start to deal with things, right?
Maybe. But don’t we also all process things differently? Things like this happened to me too. But I didn’t go on a sex-spree. Did I? And I am not wishing for affairs no in my mid-forties.
Perhaps. Perhaps mine just didn’t explode like hers (I have a very definite number, but I have been told it is also definitely more than it should be). Perhaps I was lucky and built walls instead of a freeway (her nickname was Clamydia, mine was Ice Queen). Perhaps I was good at being honest with myself and chose a husband who wanted to talk about sex.
The book isn’t really about Claire, even though it is all about her. It is about the voice that women don’t have; it is about a whole generation being left without words or expression; it is about victim blaming; it is about a world that didn’t keep us safe, and then didn’t allow us to stand up and say fuck off; it is about the world that I am afraid to set my two beautiful daughters free in; it is about women having to make choices between things like freedom and safety... and we all chose!
That’s what it was for me in any case.
Raw and beautifully written! Maybe a tad long, but in the end I didn’t know what she should have left out, and in the last 15 pages she had my heart. And my tears.
Maybe. But don’t we also all process things differently? Things like this happened to me too. But I didn’t go on a sex-spree. Did I? And I am not wishing for affairs no in my mid-forties.
Perhaps. Perhaps mine just didn’t explode like hers (I have a very definite number, but I have been told it is also definitely more than it should be). Perhaps I was lucky and built walls instead of a freeway (her nickname was Clamydia, mine was Ice Queen). Perhaps I was good at being honest with myself and chose a husband who wanted to talk about sex.
The book isn’t really about Claire, even though it is all about her. It is about the voice that women don’t have; it is about a whole generation being left without words or expression; it is about victim blaming; it is about a world that didn’t keep us safe, and then didn’t allow us to stand up and say fuck off; it is about the world that I am afraid to set my two beautiful daughters free in; it is about women having to make choices between things like freedom and safety... and we all chose!
That’s what it was for me in any case.
Raw and beautifully written! Maybe a tad long, but in the end I didn’t know what she should have left out, and in the last 15 pages she had my heart. And my tears.
sxtwo's review against another edition
2.0
I didn't really like this, but there were parts that were brilliant so I kept going hoping for more.
robinsbooks's review against another edition
2.0
Author was brave to write such a candid memoir but a little too self-indulgent and at times whiny for me.
jaclynday's review against another edition
3.0
Her raw, clever writing does only a mediocre job of hiding the messy construction of the book. There are stunning moments that beg to be reread, but those are (unfortunately) lost in the sorting through of everything else.
karabk's review against another edition
3.0
Old diaries, old letters, what the best movie kiss meant to you, searching for love in all the wrong places, Roman Polanski, the physical indignity of aging & so much more in this memoir. Teens of the 80s and 90s, you'll know.
But all that crying?....
Read my full review on http://booksandbrands.blogspot.ca/2017/08/love-and-trouble.html
But all that crying?....
Read my full review on http://booksandbrands.blogspot.ca/2017/08/love-and-trouble.html
sallyeh's review against another edition
4.0
It took me a third of the book to warm up to the author, or it took the author 1/3 of the book to warm up to her subject but once we all got on the same page, I appreciated her candor, her attention to female sexuality, and her ability to turn a story of, well, not much into a reflection of, as the subtitle claims, a sort of communal reckoning of midlife, when one's youth surprisingly feels closer than ever, and the need to LIVE is writ more largely because of our number of birthdays.
purlscout's review against another edition
5.0
I was shocked by all of the negative reviews for Love & Trouble, which I found to be so compelling that I read only a chapter a week in order to fully digest its contents. This book of essays is a beautifully written poetic ode to the complicated relationship between aging and the evolvution of individual female sexuality.