I Liked My Life
by Abby Fabiaschi
I hated this book so much, I don’t want to waste my time writing a review discouraging you from wasting your time by reading it. So, I’ll keep it brief. I Liked My Life is one of the worst books I’ve ever read, and if I could go back in time to extract it from my brain and get my time back, I would gladly do it.
The story takes place in the aftermath of a woman’s suicide. She left her husband and teenaged daughter without a clue, warning, or note. She’s in limbo, observing their grief from the air above, and trying her best to influence them for the better. To her husband, she tries to get him to understand how to parent and how to help their daughter. To the child, she’s trying to send down waves of love and assuages of guilt. And for them both, she’s picked out a replacement wife and mother whom she hopes will enter their lives and make it all better. Throughout it all, her narration tells us she feels terrible for their pain and wishes she could explain why she did what she did, but she can’t yet. They just wouldn’t understand. When the huge mystery is finally revealed in the end (don’t worry, no spoilers here), it makes you want to wring her non-existent neck. She totally could have explained it earlier! There was absolutely no reason to drag it out for hundreds of pages.
My other gigantic beef with this story is the sanctification of a lousy mother. Once again, a daughter remembers her mother in platitudes of advice that are succinct, and therefore supposed to be brilliant. I don’t believe the “cool mother” is the good mother. A woman who tells her sixteen-year-old daughter, “I trust you,” rather than a discouragement to have sex with her boyfriend doesn’t have her best interest at heart. A woman who confides to her daughter she learned she stuck her hand down her boyfriend’s pants in the middle of class for the reason of, “You embarrassed me so I wanted to embarrass you,” isn’t a good mother. What follows is no lesson on adolescence, consequences for one’s actions, or putting the brakes on her hormones while in public, but instead a giggly lunch on the town.
For the vast majority of the book, both the husband and daughter find out the narrator was resentful and unappreciated by being a housewife and mother. They read her diary and feel intensely guilty that they took her for granted, driving her to suicide. It appears to be one giant guilt trip, shoving the notion of “be nice to your mother or she’ll kill herself” down the readers’ throats ad nauseum. It’s sickening. To the narrator, I have this piece of advice: if you didn’t want to be taken for granted and spend your life working the most thankless job in the universe, you shouldn’t have had children. I didn’t feel sorry for the narrator for one second, not even when the big mystery was revealed.
Believe it or not, I am keeping my review brief. I could continue for pages. Unless you hate yourself and wish to be tortured, stay far away from this book. I wish I had.
The story takes place in the aftermath of a woman’s suicide. She left her husband and teenaged daughter without a clue, warning, or note. She’s in limbo, observing their grief from the air above, and trying her best to influence them for the better. To her husband, she tries to get him to understand how to parent and how to help their daughter. To the child, she’s trying to send down waves of love and assuages of guilt. And for them both, she’s picked out a replacement wife and mother whom she hopes will enter their lives and make it all better. Throughout it all, her narration tells us she feels terrible for their pain and wishes she could explain why she did what she did, but she can’t yet. They just wouldn’t understand. When the huge mystery is finally revealed in the end (don’t worry, no spoilers here), it makes you want to wring her non-existent neck. She totally could have explained it earlier! There was absolutely no reason to drag it out for hundreds of pages.
My other gigantic beef with this story is the sanctification of a lousy mother. Once again, a daughter remembers her mother in platitudes of advice that are succinct, and therefore supposed to be brilliant. I don’t believe the “cool mother” is the good mother. A woman who tells her sixteen-year-old daughter, “I trust you,” rather than a discouragement to have sex with her boyfriend doesn’t have her best interest at heart. A woman who confides to her daughter she learned she stuck her hand down her boyfriend’s pants in the middle of class for the reason of, “You embarrassed me so I wanted to embarrass you,” isn’t a good mother. What follows is no lesson on adolescence, consequences for one’s actions, or putting the brakes on her hormones while in public, but instead a giggly lunch on the town.
For the vast majority of the book, both the husband and daughter find out the narrator was resentful and unappreciated by being a housewife and mother. They read her diary and feel intensely guilty that they took her for granted, driving her to suicide. It appears to be one giant guilt trip, shoving the notion of “be nice to your mother or she’ll kill herself” down the readers’ throats ad nauseum. It’s sickening. To the narrator, I have this piece of advice: if you didn’t want to be taken for granted and spend your life working the most thankless job in the universe, you shouldn’t have had children. I didn’t feel sorry for the narrator for one second, not even when the big mystery was revealed.
Believe it or not, I am keeping my review brief. I could continue for pages. Unless you hate yourself and wish to be tortured, stay far away from this book. I wish I had.