Imogen Tomlinson > Recent Status Updates

I really want to like this more than I do, but my overwhelming feeling so far is it's a tale of 2 selfish and volatile people who ruin the lives of everyone around them. I felt this way on my first reading as a teenager and time has yet to modify my view.

This guy is bending over backwards to convince us that his weirdo dead uncle is an unappreciated genius.

I'm trying really hard not to be judgemental, but what the hell was she doing watching Night of the Living Dead with a 7yr old?? And then dragging said 7yr old into the kitchen because she, the adult, is too scared to go in there alone?? I thought Joan Didion was supposed to have a genius intellect?

This is like if someone decided to write a literary novel about Big Ed from 90 Day Fiance.

I never want to read the phrase 'she bared her teeth' ever again.

Creepy and dreamlike atmosphere but now, in the last 100 pages, it's devolved into lazy and superficial identity politics. I feel so swindled, what a disappointment.

Thought this was going to be about how she lost her writing mojo but so far she's just going on about growing up in Brooklyn and being the only Jewish family in her building. Also she is proof that, for the most part, authors do not make effective audiobook narrators.

'And again I saw that I'd got it very wrong. That it was a mean trick, suddenly to be so rational and practical in the face of her distress. It was as if I'd delicately pulled on a pair of butler's gloves. Or passed the whole thing on to a different department.'

Narrator pronounces Edinburgh as 'Edinberg'. It's really not complicated to find out the correct pronunciation.

Kaysen attempts to make some superficial and scientifically inaccurate commentary about the connection between mind and brain and how psychoanalysts rely on Freud. This book was published in 1993. Psychiatry had moved on since her hospitalisation with new theories she appears unaware of, making her interpretation outdated even at publication.

Think this is going to be the case that the film is better than the book.

'Some people are so scared they will just walk away if you give them half a chance to.'

Feel kind of called out on 'Never Getting Over the Fantasy of You is Going OK' lol. Best essay in the collection so far for me.

Ok so vomit isn't my cup of cha but the way she describes sexual fantasy I kind of get where she is coming from.

Not really interested in pages and pages of sexts, thanks Mel.

Right in the middle there's a huge info dump in the form of Justin recruiting a 12 year old to operate Tessa's laptop so that he can find out everything. This reads like the boomer's guide to Windows 97.

Tessa is unbearable. Not buying her and Justin's 'deep love'. It seems to be based entirely upon sex and their vast age difference is creepy,

Fan fiction level characterisation. Tessa is an annoying Mary Sue. Would it really have been so bad to have let her have an affair with Arnold Bluhm? I don't think she would have lost much reader sympathy, unless the intended reader is the sort of man who sees a woman as 'sullied' if he has sexual relations with someone other than himself.

Taking a break with this one. It's too close to the bone right now. Also I can't stand the Angelo storyline, that man is a true misogynist.

Taking a break from this. It's very readable - clever and funny - but I'm not gripped by it. I don't care very much about the characters and am left questioning the point of the story. Think I'm going through a reading slump in the busy pre-Christmas period and just need something that will grip me rather than a depressing introspective read (my usual taste).