A good girlie memoir, and an atrocious one.
Stung by the double non-whammy of her novel's rejection and her husband's immobile sperm, Shapiro decides that her only course of action is to contact all the men who've ever broken her heart in order to find out why they rejected her. No, that doesn't make sense to me either, and yes, I realize you've probably already read a variation on this story from the male's-eye-view in Nick Hornby's vastly superior High Fidelity. But this is a memoir. That was fiction. Ahem.
Problem number one: the non-memoir "memoir." You just can't reconstruct from verbatim conversations that took place ages ago. Nobody has that kind of memory (thank Christ) and unless Shapiro was taping?which I doubt?it's all just cobbled together memories edited into pithy, overly clever Gilmore Girls-style conversations the likes of which clearly never happened as written.
And sure, changing names to protect the ugly/jerky/insane is done even in memoirs (see also Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor), but why would the author change the name of her own husband, he of the dysfunctional sperm? Is she worried he's going to sue? (Come to think of it, I would.) All she had to do was change her name too, declare the thing chick-lit, and this problem would've been a non-issue. Instead, her dishonesty colors the entire read and adds a whole new level of irritation.
Problem number two: utterly unlikeable subject. Granted, I've read autobiographies of murderers and other ne'er-do-wells, but those were compelling for their own unique reasons. We're supposed to like Shapiro. We don't. She comes across as self-obsessed, competitive, whiny and so patronizing in her attitude toward her "tragic" single friend (who is beautiful and successful yet unmarried) that I wanted to reach through the pages and slap her one. This perspective actually made me reminisce on one of the only good turns of phrase gleaned from Bridget Jones: the "smug marrieds." Variations on "at least I'm not single" pepper the book. Oh really? I kept thinking. "At least I'm not married to someone who tried to trick me into having a baby." Oh wait, did I forget to mention that? Yeah, she quit taking birth control pills two months before she informed her poor husband that they were going to try and have a baby. This is after he insisted from jump that he had absolutely no intention of breeding. Niiiiice.
Problem number three: the who-gives-a-shit factor. Having your novel rejected (after you've already had a bunch of books published) and being unable to conceive naturally (who does that anymore, anyway?) are not exactly world-rocking events. So not only is the motivation for this journey into the past questionable, the fishing expedition itself is inexcusably dull. After tracking down these alleged lotharios, we basically learn that the breakups were all the guys' fault and that she's great and beautiful and bad timing was pretty much to blame for everything. Except for the guy she caught banging her college roommate, that is. He's the only one of these five mopes that had the cajones to tell her to piss off when she tries to hijack him for a stroll down memory lane. It's either testament to the allure of the neurotic or evidence that men are stupid that any of them agreed to be part of this exercise in narcissism. If life were fair, this book would've been titled Five Men Who Smacked Me Upside the Head.
While Shapiro overshares, Frances Kuffel, author of another memoir called Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self, undershares. Both women are daughters of doctors, in therapy with shrinks who should be relieved of their licenses and grew up in states whose names begin with the letter "M"?that's where the similarities end. There's not an ounce of self-conscious glibness to be found within these pages. But there's pounds of other stuff. Namely, food.
Kuffel topped out at 313 pounds and then proceeded to lose 188 of them through diet, exercise and regular attendance at a local Overeaters Anonymous meeting. Having spent most of her life morbidly obese, this was quite a shock to her system. The reader can't help but be moved when Kuffel finally gets her first boyfriend?at 44!?and when she sheepishly turns to a friend and says, "I think I might be pretty too," it's a big "awww" moment, as opposed to Shapiro's incessant neurotic chatter about her weight, B-cups and good looks.
Passing for Thin's shortcoming is the book's anorexic qualities. It's inspiring that the author lost all that weight (though I could've done without the religious crap and constant recovery-speak), but she never tells us what compelled her to consume as much food as a family of four linebackers eats for dinner each night. Normal people just don't eat a gallon of ice cream and a large pizza at one sitting. She explains that she doesn't know the answer, but hints at an abusive brother, once mentioning the "subtle electric undercurrent of predatory sexuality" that permeated their house. Then, she quickly drops the topic. Research has shown that many people with eating disorders were victims of sexual abuse and as unpleasant as it might've been, a good editor wouldn't have let her get away without exploring this.
Reading these two books within a day of each other was probably unfair to Shapiro. She's a well-respected writer who is expert at communicating with humor. Kuffel is a literary agent who is accustomed to reading, not writing. But that's where Kuffel triumphs. By worrying less about putting words together and instead concentrating on meaning, she conveys more truth in one page than Shapiro manages throughout her entire book.