Self-Tanner for the Soul: How I Ran Away to Europe and Found My Inner Glow

by Cat Marnell

From Cat Marnell, author of the New York Times best-selling memoir How to Murder Your Life, an irresistibly candid and magical travelogue of soul-seeking and self-healing

The spring of 2017 should have been the greatest time of Cat Marnell’s life. She was 34 and living the New York glamour life downtown, with a thriving career and a best-selling memoir. Instead, it was one of the worst. She’d gone through a protracted and traumatic breakup, nearly run out of money, and, during a month-long binge, "done something horrible" to herself that she couldn’t undo.

Her troubles mounting, Marnell makes a radically simple choice: She decides to leave her problems behind. She puts her belongings into storage and uses the last of her book advance to buy a one-way plane ticket to Europe. For the next four months, Marnell is a woman on the move. With nothing but a suitcase (Sammy) and a bag of wigs to her name, and no agenda other than to follow her heart (and maybe the Libertines' Pete Doherty), Marnell embarks on a profound personal journey, from late-night "Wizard Walks" in mysterious cities to almost drowning in a river - all while learning to face down her demons.

Whimsical, infectious, and utterly life-affirming, Self-Tanner for the Soul reminds us all of the life-changing magic of running away.

Genres: Audiobook, Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Mental Health, Travel

Audiobook

Published October 17, 2019

About the author

Cat Marnell is a Condé Nast drop-out and former beauty editor at Lucky and xoJane.com. She wrote the “Amphetamine Logic” column for Vice. How to Murder Your Life is her first book.

Reviews

[Maggie Downs]

I don't know how to rate this. It's a travelogue in which the reader doesn't learn much about the locations, and it's a memoir that doesn't offer any meaningful insight into the narrator. It's also not a story that is scandalous or titillating or full of action.

But somehow I still think Cat Marnell is magnetic and fascinating, and I could have listened to 10 more hours of the most mundane details of her everyday life. And these are the most mundane details. She talks about buying a train ticket or going to the grocery store to get a salad, and I'm totally rapt over here, like, "YES YES TELL ME MORE."

[Pauliina K · Rating 2 out of 5]

i'll always love cat marnell but most of this is just mindless travel journal babbling with no literary merit

[Pål Fiva · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the previous book, but this is just a lazy cash-in. Uninspired writing, boring incidents and zero insight beyond “wow travelling is amazing! For your brain!”. As Cat would say: I’m so over it!

[Jacque Nordahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Cat Marnell and there were a few good lessons and interesting things that happened during her trip. But most of it was rambling about the same things happening over and over again in different countries.

[Professor Weasel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love her. Will always consume any kind of content she creates. STAN!

[Jessica Regan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Man, was I disappointed by this. I get that Cat is more than the sum of her drug addictions and various life-murdering escapades, but it's not fair to tout a book as "the most honest thing I have ever written" and then leave out details about drug addiction; breakups; hair-scorching, etc. Wtf? This was basically an actual travel diary which I could get anywhere and not the Cat I know and love

Oh also if she mentioned being a "wizard" one more time I was finna scream

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good writing is about voice, doesn’t matter what the topic or genre is, fiction or non-fiction, it’s all about having a personality to go with the words and being vulnerable and honest. And Cat “former hot mess” Marnell has this in spades.

I love her old beauty columns that kept it real. I mean, unless you’re a professional make-up artist, you just want to know things like how to put mascara on when drunk without poking yourself in the eye (mastering the smokey eye is a myth, it can never be mastered).

This is an audio book, a 100-day solo travel diary of a trip Cat took to Europe in 2017. She gets drunk a lot, sees some cool stuff, has lots of adventures and misadventures. I can relate. I wish I had kept better travel diaries.

Cat calls her wanderings Wizard Walking, when you wander around for hours curiously, and often end up off the beaten track doing or seeing something magical that makes you feel “wizardly”. This is my favourite thing to do when travelling and now I know it has a name. I would love to go Wizard Walking with Cat one day.

[Jenny Muller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Cat Marnell. Yes, I've heard the naysayers' arguments, that she's a self-centered spoiled brat whose story wouldn't be compelling if she wasn't rich and white, etc., but those people don't get the MAGIC of Cat, which is out in force in this manic whirlwind account of a 118-day trip around Europe.
See, Cat is an aesthete, and she is VORACIOUS. Her appetite for new experiences and art and beauty is so insatiable that she will hobble around on a bum leg and zero sleep and force herself to get more experiences in. Toward the end she starts admitting to herself that she's tired and ready to go home, but she stays another several weeks after that! Her enthusiasm about each new sight is so uplifting. I can't wait to listen to the book again, taking notes this time on which of these places *I* want to go.
Cat gets into a lot of scrapes during her tour of Europe, often due to her own dumbassery, which she readily admits, but a lot of the time I was like "Jesus H. Christ, Cat!" Losing her debit cards, which proves to be a huge headache for months after. Breaking the wheel on her fancy suitcase and not even trying to fix it, saying she'll just get a new one. Missing $900 plane flights and just forking over more money.
In Montenegro she gets chased by a pack of stray dogs and bitten on the leg by one of them, and then for several weeks after that her leg is all swollen and killing her and she treks around on it anyway and never bothers to get it checked out, and meanwhile she says she has no idea how it got that way, and doesn't even say whether it's the same leg that the dog bit, and if it is, why didn't she make that connection, and I would have been FREAKING OUT if a stray dog bit me, especially if I was traveling alone in a foreign country!
And another time she's walking around alone at night, in maybe Turkey or Romania, and she gets followed aggressively by a man driving a car, and of course she finds this upsetting and flees from him but if it were me I'd be full-on panicking.
But that kind of thing is what makes Cat a phenomenal traveler and travel narrator. She dares to do shit most people never would. Walking around in the middle of the night through unfamiliar streets just to see how the city looks at night, by herself...and did I mention, wearing WIGS the entire time? Because she burned off all her hair in some drug-related horror situation that she doesn't go into detail on? And some of these wigs are, like, mint green, and she eventually decides that brightly colored wigs attract too much unwelcome attention in places like Turkey...I mean...and what about that time she almost drowns in the river in Basel? What happens to your wig then? It almost makes you feel like if you AREN'T a drug addict with ADHD, and you still have your own hair, you could totally rock a tour like this--well, as long as you could stay as fearless and buoyant and endlessly curious as Cat does the whole time (I mean, sometimes she has bad moods and she's often tired, but even with that).
Pro tip: Cat's Instagram is full of photos from this trip, if you want visuals of some of the stuff she describes, as well as her subsequent trips around Asia, Africa, Scandinavia and many other places she doesn't get to in this book.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Cat Marnell, I loved how to murder your life But this... this was barely a book. As I said to a friend, it reminded me of a voicemail left by a sparkling and charming friend — and voicemails should be maybe max two minutes long, and this was six hours. It became so repetitive and wore out its welcome big time, sadly. There’s something so funny about her, when she even slightly like exerts herself I think she is so brilliant and funny but so much of this literally was just like what you would write on your Google calendar, like “lunch at 12:30” —with no angle or opinion or thought behind it. I almost respect how this is what she turned in? It doesn’t change my feelings about her or my respect for her and I still look forward to whatever she does next, this just honestly felt like not even a book.

[Rebecca]

While I respect Cat Marnell for not wanting to focus on addiction as a theme for her writing, this audiobook felt a little shallow. Her voice and sense of humor are still there, through the endless "wizard walks", missed flights and glasses of wine, there was something missing - and it wasn't drugs! I hope Marnell finds a way to speak about herself in a way that feels like the whole truth without bringing her addiction into it.

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

After How To Murder Your Life, I instantly became obsessed with the messy life of Cat Marnell. The beauty and wellness guru who took care of herself by taking too much Adderall and booze. The oxymoronic version of herself was too much to handle. When I found out the week leading to the release of her new book, I instantly preordered and waiting to listen. It did not disappoint.

At first, I was a little skeptical, but hearing her stories of walking at night, meeting beautiful strangers everywhere, and following Pete around was a whimsical story that sucked me in. The stories made me nostalgic for Europe and desperate to visit the spaces I haven't been privileged enough to visit yet. Lastly, the anxiety from her financial troubles pushed me over and provided some interesting insight on how to survive.

Well done, Cat!

[Farrah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I really enjoyed this book. I am fascinated by Europe (having only been to Italy, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, myself), so I LOVED hearing about all of the places she went to. It was like a travel guide told by your wild best friend! As a result, I have a great list of places I want to visit the next time I make it across the globe. It was also lovely hearing Marnell's voice as she told the story. It made it a lot easier to empathize with her mishaps and to laugh with her when those mishaps were funny. Listening about all of the people she met who were fun and good to her also really gave me back the faith in humanity that I have lost since the last election.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

liked it, but i'm not an audiobook person so i struggled with the format

[Arianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this woman, she is so delightful and charming that I would read anything that she wrote. This is an audiobook which she narrates and she’s so engaging listening to her speak. This is basically a travel diary, and very different from her previous book, but that’s ok as she’s so fun to listen to.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is unlistenable even for a big Cat fan
I made it to day 46 before I could take no more of the repetitive basics of her trip
I think listening to my middle school diaries read aloud would be more interesting, show more growth, and show less entitlement than these dated entries.
Same day over and over basically, she doesn’t seem to really understand how lucky she is and there isn’t any sense of recovery or growth from “murdering her life” preciously.
Maybe if you like talk of wizards and travel books with nothing describing the travel this is for you

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is enjoyable if you're a fan of Cat Marnell but it is totally devoid of plot and really just seems to be her unedited travel journal.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marnell's writing really sang in her XO Jane/Amphetamine Logic days. I remember being utterly gripped. Scouring the internet for more Cat Marnell. Hungry for a front row seat to that glorious, car-crash-in-poetry-in-motion. Which is a bit, I acknowledge, like ambulance chasing. Cat Marnell need not die for her art. Need not die for your reading pleasure.

Both HTMYL and STFTS lack the beauty of her prose (Valley girl meets Brett Easton Ellis meets Joan Didion meets Hunter S Thompson) in her earlier work. But they also lack her rawness. Her balls to the wallness. STFTS particularly gives me nothing of Cat Marnell. Or if it does, it's Cat Marnell playing Cat Marnell.

I've noticed this trend in the memoirs I've read lately where the writer holds back the mess of their lives, the dirt, the underbelly. Perhaps it's oversharing fatigue (twittering tires you out) perhaps because we've entered a new era since 2012 where the artist is more heavily policed (does your art meet all our current moral coventions? No? Cue a social media shaming.) and so writers are afraid to be honest. Perhaps peoples' lives have no dirt anymore (the more therapy, the less poetry). Who knows? But whatever it is, the memoir is suffering.

[McManus · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish I had another way to start this review without echoing everyone's "I love Cat Marnell, buuuuuut..." but I have no choice. This travelogue felt...pointless. There were some moments with a little heart - but therein lies the very issue. The whole book had very little heart. Very little literary value. Very little purpose.

I'm wary of being a trauma vulture, but I felt so dissatisfied with the lack of Cat's signature narrative of struggle and addiction. Giving teasers of the inciting incidents of the trip and then never discussing them absolutely drained this book of depth. I was wondering throughout why she wrote this book

I respect that Cat didn't want to write another book about her struggles and addiction, and I'm trying to be wary of being a trauma voyeur, but without any actual depth, I wanted anything besides repetitions of a French city being "so dope".

A positive is that hearing Cat's voice feels like listening to a friend, but this was like listening to a friend ramble off their endlessly long ~crazy~ experiences about a trip you didn't ask about.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

This audiobook is def for the more hardcore Cat Marnell fans such as me than the casual reader/listener. If you liked How To Murder Your Life because it was an entertaining read written in a nice style and told the trainwreck story that everyone loves to read about you will not like this. If you liked How To Murder Your Life because you remember the early days of xojane and adore Cat Marnell because she offers up some form of representation you'll adore this.

Cat does seem a lot older in this audiobook, as if she is aware that she is creeping towards the age where she doesn't have to give everything she loves up but a lot of her disorders and illnesses can bring about the end in a way that is much more concrete then when someone is younger. There is also a lot less of social drama as for the most part she is alone and when she does hang out around other people, they are fellow travelers and only around for the short chapter or two. Most of the antics that she gets up to are the average sitcom-esque hijinks that occur to everyone when they travel.

Still, there is something charming about the story and since it is only in audio form, you get the sense that you're meeting up with her in a cafe while she sits you down and tells you all about her vacation while giving you the souvenir that she picked up.

The one thing I will say, as someone who loved Cat's beauty articles and still think that out of all the beauty writers/bloggers/vloggers out there in the world gave the best recommendations, I wish there were more beauty products and tips involved or at least mentioned.

[Paige Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An audio travel diary of beauty guru Cat Marnell’s escape to visit Europe after a drain-circler relationship and death spiral of pill addiction. The physical and mental stress is so bad it’s leaving legions on her skin and shedding her hair like a straight razor—never mind the success and spunky interviews for her NY Times bestseller, How to Murder Your Life.

Though that memoir was one of my all time favorites, this one is a severe letdown, more of a conversational list/snapshot of days she spent in each country than an actual book. There’s maybe ONE page dedicated to each city. No real prose, story, characters, or even much detail. Super simplistic summary rather than scenes. We maybe get 40 words about her addiction or breakup or those concerning rashes with Lupus-like symptoms that never get addressed.

Instead of interesting stories of days past when she’d smoke PCP with cabbies and collage her rat-ridden East Coast apartments, here she gets wine-wasted every night, misses planes and trains between shady hostels, and occasionally eats cake at 3AM with JJ Brine—the artist who introduced Amanda Bynes to Satanism. Too bad you’ll never hear a single conversation or much of anything besides bouts of casual bulimia, lots of leering and groping by men no matter their ethnic background, and constant anti-American glaring and shortchanging, shoddy transportation and lack of nightlife that makes me want to skip that continent entirely

[Jerrica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This definitely got rounded up, 3 stars is generous, but it's because I'm such a Cat Marnell fangirl and I genuinely enjoyed listening to all the mundanities of her life. I'm in deep, guys.

Basically, this is Cat going traveling the way a junkie goes traveling: she describes arriving at each new destination as its own addictive hit, so she travels constantly, seeing a new city practically every day with her Eurorail pass. She only devotes a couple of minutes to each destination, and doesn't describe much about the location because she mainly wanders around at night.

If you're a fan of Cat Marnell already, you'll probably enjoy this at least a little, but it's clear that she could've gone back after the fact to add details, flesh out passages, etc. Instead, it reads like something someone typed hastily on their Macbook, which she did.

[Shivnesh Patel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good to hear Cats voice again!

It is good to hear Cats voice again! Its great to see that she is so much better!

This isn't a self help book or a travel guide. This more of a Wizard trying to remember how to be a Wizard! Lessons for all of us!

Found the book to be quite sad, Cat seems so lonely at times. Don't let that put you off though! She is learning how to live with herself again! No real joy without sacrifice, and she is totally grateful for being alive and on this trip!

Highly recommend if you loved how to murder your life! You will defo enjoy hearing about Cat's adventure through Europe!

Only reason I am not giving it 5 stars is that I wish there was more! Can't wait for her next book! Filled with joy knowing she's doing better in life!

[Courtney Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. If you’re looking for a surface level travel diary to learn about must-see locations on your upcoming European adventure, sure it’s great. To me, the book didn’t really have a point. It unfortunately felt a lot like something that was thrown together to ride the wave of success of How to Murder Your Life. It’s more of a tease to her upcoming work than a continuation of it. She vaguely references things that happened following the release of her first best seller but goes into no detail. Fans of Cat, I would say skip this one and wait for her next memoir which hopefully will give more depth.

[M. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had been a fan of Cat Marnell since Lucky magazine and Vice, but this is truly an awful audio experience… this made me sad that her editors and agent let this be published in this form. It sounds like Marnell was trapped in a recording studio while looking at her Instagram for 4 hours. No editing, no insight, and the razor sharp amphetamine logic that made her earlier writing thrilling, troubling, and interesting is replaced by “…what was I talking about again?”

The sheer number of people continuously failing this woman is upsetting to think about, starting with everyone listed in the end credits of this release.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to this audiobook because I respect Marnell as a writer. Her last book was brash and bold and a definite page-turner. This one… not so much. It’s pretty dull. It has little to say.

I’m even grading on a curve because this isn’t supposed to be your typical memoir, and I didn’t expect that. It’s only available as an audiobook and only from Audible, I believe. Marnell isn’t trying to trick anyone into thinking this book is anything other than the Euro trip journal of a quite privileged woman.

It’s supplemental material for her fans, basically.

At least it’s short.

[Erin S · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is very different from How to Murder Your Life, which isn't to say it's worse, but if you're looking for something similar, then I would pass on this. This audiobook is a travel log before it's anything else. I personally would have liked more reflection on the chaotic time that led her to take an extended international trip; how traveling addressed the needs she had that weren't being met; and constantly coming up against creepy men. Those moments, however, were few and far between.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Marnell's first book. It was riveting and emotional and interesting. I loved the idea of Marnell traveling the world and writing about it but she really didn't. This audiobook was like watching an episode of The Real Housewives, if there were no drama. Marnell didn't have anything insightful to say about any place she visited. She could have stayed home. I know this sounds harsh but listening to her ramble was pretty painful.

[Eve Dangerfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, but I’m into Cat Marnell’s voice and vibe. I couldn’t assume others would feel the same way because most of this stuff was repetitive and mundane but I lapped it up. It was like self-tanner for my soul, just imagining Cat rambling around Europe drinking pink wine and taking tiny amounts of prescription drugs…I just kinda like that she exists, you know? Definitely start with How To Murder before you do this one though—just to make sure.

[Bridget Lombard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with a lot of critics that this dig get slightly redundant, but one thing I found really refreshing was that, though this is a bit of a travel memoir, it goes beyond a bit of the instagram, buttoned up veneer that many books about travel have. Cat gets honest about seedy situations, frustrations, and the loneliness one can encounter while travelling alone. It also made me really want to ride a train all over Europe.

[Roberta King · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s all just so ‘glowy!’ Is the adjective used to describe ‘literally, like,’ everything in this book. Concerned Cat hasn’t quite kicked her drug habit yet as the entire memoir sounds like it was written while stoned. Having said that, i’m ashamed to admit that I did enjoy it. I think it brought on a nostalgia for the times I spent backpacking aged eighteen. I certainly would have written something similar to this back then. ‘How to Murder your Life’ better.