Lots could be said - interesting/addictive audiobook....but I kept an arm distance!!

I loved this memoir. So fun, sexy, wise, open, and fierce. I think I related to so much of it because Dederer and I were both raised in Washington state and are only two months apart in age. If I were a woman, this may have been MY memoir. I wrote a longer review with personal thoughts on this book and it will appear in the next issue of Post Road journal.

While Dederer's experiences are unique to her, there is a universality to her expression of those experiences that will ring true to a lot of women:* Do you want to be safe or be free? Can you be both?* The transition from being a girl, being blissfully unaware of your body beyond its utility, to the moment you realize that your body is something to be looked upon and it affects the way you move in it, feel about it.* Simultaneously wanting the male gaze, courting it even, and hating it at the s...

This book is a perfect example of why I try to avoid memoirs by contemporary white middle-class heterosexual women like the plague. Dederer thinks she's being so edgy by writing candidly about her sexual history past and present but it's actually quite boring and ridiculously self-involved. Only a completely un-self-aware person could write sentences like "My mom got chocolate-frosting stains on the upholstery of my Prius and I was elaborately patient about it" and expect readers to feel some sy...

Blech. I kept wanting to stop reading, but already owed the library fine so kept reading to the end - you know, to get my money's worth? I guess this holds your interest inasmuch as reading someone's diary for an hour might be interesting, but it meanders, is imprecise, is exasperating, is immature. The excerpts of her childhood diary only serve to highlight that she hasn't changed much. Oh, the privileged navel-gazing! Why did I pick this up? I have to be extra careful in choosing memoirs, now

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.

Mixed feelings. On the one hand, Claire Dederer is a very good writer; on the other hand, I found this book to be too long and self indulgent. There was a lot of repetition. Basically, she's a very sexual person, she slept around a lot when she was younger and really enjoyed it and now she's a married, middle aged Mom and feels sad that she no longer gets the amount of male attention that she used to. Being sexually desired and desirable is a big part of her identity, however, as a feminist, she...

Best book I've read in a while. Couldn't put this baby down. Female sexuality, like all sexuality, is complicated-- thank god we are finally talking about it with this kind of lucidity and candor.

A woman going through a ridiculous mid life crisis is fixated on her thirteen year old self. Quoting from the book, "You received a savage e-mail from a mentor and former editor of yours, who told you the book was so unreadable she had to stop midway through." kept ringing in my mind as I read this book but persevered to the end.I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

I really needed this book. It was the exact thing I needed right now. And it's one I'd really like to visit again because it was a salve for my soul.

I didn't find this all that different in tone from Dederer's 2010 memoir Poser, a work that she now disparages as a "lady book". Much of this new memoir I found grating and hard to listen to. I was going to give it two stars but then the final chapter or two redeemed it. She's good with putting sentences together, at finding great phrases to describe things, but in both books I got the feeling she wasn't being entirely truthful, and was convincing herself of things because she found a phrasing o...

Free copy for honest review."A ferocious, sexy, hilarious memoir about going off the rails at midlife and trying to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become." - Nothing could be farther from the truth. I found this book to be boring and I didn't find it the least bit funny. As far as I was concerned it was all about a middle aged women bitching and moaning about her life. I won't be recommending it to friends.

I was very disappointed. I love Claire Dederer's writing, and this book has its moments. But I felt sad that she defines her life in relationship to men and not by her talent and accomplishments. In fact, it seems that she has subordinated her career to trying preserve a view of herself as a sexy, young woman. There is such power in middle age and she's missing it - and depriving us of what she would have had to offer if she could only stop looking in the mirror. You know, everybody is kinda slu...

I specialize in child abuse and neglect, and based on that, I would say the author is still suffering quite actively from it effects as an adult. As a child, she seems largely ignored and certainly unprotected. I found it sad that she spun this maltreatment into some kind of wacky, sexualized personality instead of the ill effects of what it was: blatant neglect. Yes, it was the 70s and 80s, but parents still protected their children. As I was reading the book, more than once I had the impulse t...

I checked the audio version of this out from the library. I'm a complete sucker for a good memoir and seen this one floating around but also noticed how mehhh the reviews were. Still, eventually I gave in and gave it a go.We all knew that girl. Growing up we all knew that girl in school who you saw her name written on a park bench or in the bathroom with her number written under it stating "call for a good time." Sometimes you didn't find out until years later about this girl, but she was there....

I bought this book because it was recommended by Elizabeth Gilbert on FB. The synopsis captured my interest immediately because I'm the same age, am going through menopause, am a long-time wife and an aspiring memoirist. I should have known that if Elizabeth Gilbert was recommending it, I would also need a dictionary to read along. I get that this author is an essayist, book critic, Oberlin educated reporter and has been reading since she was born, but my god, bring it down a few notches for tho...

Like the author, I am a Gen X mother who works from home in a fairly rural location while my spouse travels for work. I was intrigued by the author's perspective. While I found some great insight in the author's perspective of what it means to be an aging mother in the US, I also felt like the book lacked introspection. It was more a series of observations, stories, and musings rather than a cohesive work that led to any sort of concrete realization or epiphany. Although, perhaps that is, in its...

It was deeply comforting to read this memoir from someone who was young at the same time as me, with the all the same cultural touchstones of what it meant to be cool when we were young women, with the cultural backdrop of teen star tomboys and the specter of Roman Polanski, and finding emotional resonance in music and art-house films, down to the erotic signals in A Room with a View. Who is eligible for happiness in the American universe of that time and this one? I can identify with wanting to...

Author was brave to write such a candid memoir but a little too self-indulgent and at times whiny for me.

A sort of languid droop-through of one woman’s sullenness snd sexuality in midlife. Really enjoyed this thoughtful, unselfconscious memoir.