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Spent: Exposing Our Complicated Relationship with Shopping
In Spent , editor Kerry Cohen opens the closet doors wide to tales of women’s true relationships with shopping, from humorous stories of love/hate relationships with the mall to heartbreaking tales of overspending to fix relationships. With a contributor list that includes notable female writers like Emily Chenoweth, Ophira Eisenberg, Allison Amend, and Aryn Kyle, the essays each shine light on the particular impact shopping has on all of us. Whether they’re cleaning out closets of loved ones, hiding a shoplifting habit, trying out extreme couponing, dividing up family possessions, or buying a brand-new car while in labor, the book’s contributors vacillate between convincing themselves to spend and struggling not to. This illuminating anthology links the effects shopping has on our emotions-whether it fills us with guilt, happiness, resentment, or doubt-our self-worth, and our relationships with parents, grandparents, lovers, children, and friends.
- GenresNonfictionEssays
264 pages, Paperback
First published September 23, 2014
About the author
Kerry Cohen
19 books268 followersKerry Cohen is the author of Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity; Seeing Ezra: A Mother’s Story of Autism, Unconditional Love, and The Meaning of Normal; Dirty Little Secrets: Breaking the Silence on Teenage Girls and Promiscuity; as well as three young adult novels – Easy; The Good Girl; and It’s Not You, It’s Me. Her essays have been featured in The New York Times' "Modern Love" series, The Washington Post, Brevity, Literary Mama, and many other journals and anthologies.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 4, 2016
This anthology was a mixed bag for me. I had high hopes guys, and I was underwhelmed by some of the narratives. Others were really good. YMMV.
October 19, 2014
It’s not really any surprise that the essays contained within the aptly named anthology, Spent: Exposing Our Complicated Relationship with Shopping (Edited by Kerry Cohen) are all penned by women. Not to feed into sexist stereotypes, but in the immortal words of Chris Rock, “women be shoppin'”. And that’s kind of where the whole “ha, a book about women liking to shop” notion ends. Because this isn’t really that kind of book at all. As matter of fact, not a single one of the 31 essays in this book really falls into the “I-like-shopping-because-I’m-a-woman-and-that’s-what-I’m-supposed-to-like-to-do-for-fun” category. On the contrary, there are a surprising amount of essays about just the opposite, women who loathe having to shop, at least for the traditional feminine staples (shoes, clothes, bags, makeup).
I found all of these essays fascinating and widely differing. It’s a book that begins with the universal-enough topic of shopping and branches out into our always complicated relationships with other people and ourselves. What we shop for, what we are really trying to obtain when we buy things, the meaning behind why we hate shopping, how shopping in our childhood helped to cement memories and further carve out our pro/con shopping mentality, shopping for others versus shopping for ourselves, the price point of the things we buy, where we shop, shoplifting…it’s all thought-provoking and perfect fodder for this anthology.
A quick read that really gets to the core of a problem most of us have, and explores it from honest and often relatable ways.
I found all of these essays fascinating and widely differing. It’s a book that begins with the universal-enough topic of shopping and branches out into our always complicated relationships with other people and ourselves. What we shop for, what we are really trying to obtain when we buy things, the meaning behind why we hate shopping, how shopping in our childhood helped to cement memories and further carve out our pro/con shopping mentality, shopping for others versus shopping for ourselves, the price point of the things we buy, where we shop, shoplifting…it’s all thought-provoking and perfect fodder for this anthology.
A quick read that really gets to the core of a problem most of us have, and explores it from honest and often relatable ways.
September 24, 2015
I thought this was going to be a sociology-ish text in shopping/debt/etc. (which I would have enjoyed), but it turned out to be a well vetted collection of short non-fiction stories fairly closely tied to shopping. Laugh, cry, think about things in a little different way - everything you'd want from a book of short tales.
September 14, 2015
Worth it for Jenny Moore's beautiful essay alone, Just Try it On.
February 11, 2015
I love narrative non-fiction and anything to do with shopping and finances. I really enjoyed this book!
August 22, 2021
This is a collection of essays that I was hoping would be more Jia Tolentino: incisive cultural and sociological commentary on shopping and money, mixed in with some personal experiences. Instead, the essays tended more towards story telling and memoir, exploring people's complicated relationships with others and themselves, as mediated through their experiences with shopping (whether it's gifts from boyfriends, or early shopping excursions with one's mother, home improvement projects to fend off depression). It wasn't quite what I was looking for though the essays themselves are solid, especially if you're into personal essay with a particular eye to relationships.
I'm trying to be more generous in my Goodreads rating for independent publishers & less well-know books as I've learned they can be very important for book sales. I've given this 3 stars to indicate solid writing, compelling personal stories and several excellent essays. I'd give this only 2 stars rating for my own experience reading it due to mismatched expectations
I'm trying to be more generous in my Goodreads rating for independent publishers & less well-know books as I've learned they can be very important for book sales. I've given this 3 stars to indicate solid writing, compelling personal stories and several excellent essays. I'd give this only 2 stars rating for my own experience reading it due to mismatched expectations
December 28, 2019
Felt a bit superficial overall
September 24, 2016
I normally don’t like short story compilations. I find there’s not enough of a through line to keep me interested. But this book being on a topic I am positively fascinated by — our complicated relationship with shopping — was an exception to my usual rule of avoiding short story compilations.
Spent: Exposing our Complicated Relationship with Shopping, edited by Kerry Cohen, is an captivating potpourri of stories from women (no stories from men are included in the book), talking about shopping.
Various elements of and to shopping, it must be said. The stories vary wildly in terms of focus, thread, story arc, characters, plotline, crisis points and resolution, and for me, interest. Sure, they’re all interesting in some ways, but some were much more interesting.
And some stories weren’t really about shopping, but about relationships or relationship breakdowns or family dynamics, with shopping as the scenery. I found those less interesting than the stories where shopping was the main event. After all, that’s why I purchased the book – to read about these women’s complicated relationship to shopping! (not their complicated relationships to their mothers, which is another type of book altogether).
The full review - very full!
Spent: Exposing our Complicated Relationship with Shopping, edited by Kerry Cohen, is an captivating potpourri of stories from women (no stories from men are included in the book), talking about shopping.
Various elements of and to shopping, it must be said. The stories vary wildly in terms of focus, thread, story arc, characters, plotline, crisis points and resolution, and for me, interest. Sure, they’re all interesting in some ways, but some were much more interesting.
And some stories weren’t really about shopping, but about relationships or relationship breakdowns or family dynamics, with shopping as the scenery. I found those less interesting than the stories where shopping was the main event. After all, that’s why I purchased the book – to read about these women’s complicated relationship to shopping! (not their complicated relationships to their mothers, which is another type of book altogether).
The full review - very full!
July 29, 2014
There are about thirty short essays in this 250-page anthology. They are all by by women (Seal Press publishes books by and about women) and all but a few of the names were new to me. The peices range from a humorous essay by Ophira Eisenberg about shopping for a suitable outfit to wear to a formal dinner with the President (and a few hundred others) to thoughtful essays about how shopping affects family relationships.
Normally I skip around in anthologies, starting most of the entries and finishing about half. In this collection however, I read every essay all the way through, in order. Even though these essays all use shopping as their starting point, many were really about relationships, or mental states, or becoming parents or losing parents. It's surprising, and a little disturbing, that shopping should be such an important element in most of our lives, but there it is. We shop for entertainment, for company, for distraction. We bond with others through shopping, we agonize over shopping, we shop to relieve depression. Whenever we start a new project or make a resolution, the first step is often to go shopping to acquire the right equipment. Just buying things makes us feel as though we are beginning to accomplish our goals.
Invitably, many of these ruminations about shopping are also about spending money and consuming. One of the essays that will probably stick with me is the one by Aryn Kyle, who received a half million dollar advance for her first novel. This was a huge windfall for her. It was alarming to learn how effortless it was for a previously frugal person to burn through half a mil and have nothing to show for it. I'll be looking for more of her writing.
Normally I skip around in anthologies, starting most of the entries and finishing about half. In this collection however, I read every essay all the way through, in order. Even though these essays all use shopping as their starting point, many were really about relationships, or mental states, or becoming parents or losing parents. It's surprising, and a little disturbing, that shopping should be such an important element in most of our lives, but there it is. We shop for entertainment, for company, for distraction. We bond with others through shopping, we agonize over shopping, we shop to relieve depression. Whenever we start a new project or make a resolution, the first step is often to go shopping to acquire the right equipment. Just buying things makes us feel as though we are beginning to accomplish our goals.
Invitably, many of these ruminations about shopping are also about spending money and consuming. One of the essays that will probably stick with me is the one by Aryn Kyle, who received a half million dollar advance for her first novel. This was a huge windfall for her. It was alarming to learn how effortless it was for a previously frugal person to burn through half a mil and have nothing to show for it. I'll be looking for more of her writing.
November 1, 2014
I thought this would be a sociological study of why women shop, not short stories from mostly superficial women who can't use an apostrophe to save their lives (Starbuck's, Marshall's, parent's house when referring to a two-parent household... I expect more from "professional" writers). Skipped some of the stories altogether, was marginally interested in a few of them.
March 12, 2015
It was a collection of essays from women writers and not a sociological examination that the title would suggest.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews