A review by kjboldon
Lush: A Memoir by Kerry Cohen

1.0

This book is about an important topic--the unrealistic expectations that society places on women as mothers and humans, and the ones that mothers place on themselves. But the topic is not the book, and this book didn't work for me. It was repetitive (she drank, she smoked, she screwed, she fought with her guy) and so much of it was recounted, rather than told as a compelling story. Good memoir requires a balance of tone, some self deprecation, and a lot of insight. This book lacked all those. The story of a woman who develops a drinking problem in midlife that complicates and is complicated by unhealthy relationships with men isn't enough to carry the book. And while it might feel refreshing that the ending bucks the tidy recovery narrative, there is embracing messiness and there is simply stopping; this book does the latter.