A review by notlikethebeer
I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home by Jami Attenberg

adventurous challenging fast-paced

2.25

I'm not going to lie, I didn't really enjoy this. That feels mean and bad to say about a memoir, and especially about a book where I have - admittedly!! - folded down so many corners on so many quotes. It is definitely not without it's moments of beauty, inspiration, use. There were some excellent parts, in particular the very last chapter. However, I found the structure difficult to follow, there was no logical thread and it seemed like a set of disparate essays rather than a cohesive book - with even references to previously-discussed periods being treated in an oddly new way. I spent a lot of the book wondering what the "point" was, when I would finally make some kind of sense of Attenberg's narrative. Then again, I appreciate that she owes us nothing: least of all to provide her own story in any form other than she wishes. However, I think my feelings towards Attenberg are unfortunately underscored by the fact that I just didn't gel with her, or at least the version of herself in this memoir. She just seemed full of complaints for situations she had wilfully chosen. I wanted to shout, don't you know there are people with real problems in this world? And that's not to say that she did not have real problems, of course she did. But so much of it was self-indulgent moaning about non-problems.
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