Chanel Bonfire
By: Wendy Lawless
Maybe I’ve read too many books. Maybe I’ve read too many memoirs by women with terrible childhoods. Maybe I’ve read too many good memoirs by women with terrible childhoods. Maybe I’m too cynical.
Whatever it is, I found this book a little underwhelming. In Chanel Bonfire, Lawless tells the story of her legitimately unbalanced mother who did some truly awful things to her daughters. It was a quick, fairly compelling read, but Lawless wrote in a very detached way – like an outsider looking in on her experience. She described her mother’s non-stop drinking, constant manipulations, and attempts at killing herself and her children almost clinically, without much emotion. She then wrapped up each episode with a pithy, clichéd statement like the following, “At night, before bed, my sister and I would watch the dolphins… swimming alongside the ship… Unlike us, they seemed to know where they were going.”
A little heavy-handed, don’t you think?
I’ve read this book before. The Glass Castle, The Liar’s Club, pretty much anything by Augusten Burroughs… And they were all a lot better. Don’t get me wrong – I not only finished this book, but I ripped through it quickly. It just lacked the depth and introspection I would have expected from a memoir.
In a nutshell: A quick read, but not a very deep one. Two and a half stars.
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