A Year Of Reading: November 2022

We are almost at the end of the year, and the end of my 2022 monthly wrap ups.

Unfortunately, the penultimate monthly wrap up of the year is quite short, for I only read two books. That was in part due to the length of the second one on the below list; at around 600 pages, it took the majority of the month to read, and for reasons detailed below, I struggled to make my way through it. However, I adored the first book I listened to this month...

I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy

Trigger warnings: eating disorders, alcoholism, abuse.

Wow.

McCurdy's memoir takes us through her life, from her rise to fame as a child actor and her break into the industry with iCarly, to her devastating battle with eating disorders and alcohol addiction, and her troubled relationship with her mother before she passed away. This is her truth.

It is one of the most honest, candid, impactful, breathtaking, vulnerable, and raw memoirs I have read. The conversations McCurdy has around her battle with anorexia and bulimia, and the reflections on her relationship with her abusive mother and the way her mother treated her when she was growing up, are really harrowing, but told with a courage that shows the strength McCurdy has harnessed through overcoming these experiences to reach a place of being able to talk about them within this book.

The memoir offers insights into what growing up within the acting industry is like for a young person and the pressures it brings. But it also stands as proof that you never know the truth of a life just by observing online or on TV, and that what appears eternally is not indicative of what an individual is truly feeling and experiencing. How McCurdy turns her trauma into resilience and strength is unforgettable.

I listened to the audiobook, with McCurdy as the narrator, and it made her narrative all the more powerful and emotion-inducing. Beyond the power of the memoir itself, it is stunningly written and expertly told. I hope it reaches as wide an audience as it deserves.

This is not an easy read, but a necessary one, on so many levels. After reading her memoir, I have incredible admiration for McCurdy, both as a writer and a human.

'Why does she want me to talk about mom? What’s wrong with mom? Nothing's wrong with mom. Mom was perfect. I know in my gut that I don’t believe this, that it’s a lot more complicated than this, but why on earth would I tell Laura the specifics? I’ve never told anyone the specifics and I never will. I don’t even fully understand them, and I don’t want to. I don’t need to.'

Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult

Picoult's novel tells the story of a school shooting, and follows those intimately involved: 17-year-old Peter, the shooter; Josie, his once-friend who turned distant in her aim to reach the upper echelons of high school society; Alex, Josie's mother and successful superior court judge; and Lacy, Peter's mother. As well as seeing the aftermath and shattering impact of the shooting on the community of Sterling, we go back in time to Peter and Josie's childhood, and the events that may have led to Peter's decision to commit such a terrible atrocity.

This book was - I am sorry to admit - a struggle. Though I did not hate it by any means, and there were moments when I became genuinely invested, it is nothing special. I was anticipating a powerful novel that asks us to constantly question our beliefs of the characters throughout the novel. Without the audiobook to help, I do not think I could have finished it. I found it rather boring; though the plot twist near the end was moderately surprising, it did not redeem a story that was largely stationary, hardly profound in terms of the leading question of 'Do we really ever know someone?', and lacking in genuine intrigue beyond the central event of the novel. This was disappointing, having read Picoult's Small Great Things last year and loving it. I will not be hurrying to pick another of Picoult's novels up any time soon.

'If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?'