Corvin’s Reviews > All the Way to the River > Status Update

Now she is talking about how she’s not a drug addict not an alcoholic, but she stopped “using” sex and love in an addictive way when she stopped using substances. HUH, I WONDER WHY. I really wonder what her therapist thinks of this book.

I’ll be honest; I’m not sure I can finish this. She’s just so insufferable. If the book were focused on grief, I’d be fine with that, but I’m struggling to feel empathy here.

We are supposed to be proud of Gilbert for her courage to admit she planned to murder her wife, because that’s a Hard and Scary Truth, and she spends a lot of time explaining how dangerous secrecy is to addicts, and how important it is to tell the truth even when it’s hard, and I believe that part, but it’s also possible to talk to a therapist or AA meeting instead of publishing it in a book.

Confession isn’t the same thing as accountability, is what I want to scream at the author while reading this.

Gilbert begins the book with memories of her dead ex-wife, and scenes in which Rayya tells her to go ahead and write about all the messy stuff in their story. How convenient. Also, there’s a long section trying to explain why love and sex addiction is real, though it is not thought to be real by many experts. But she has to convince us of this if we will go along with her bad behavior later in the book.

Got this from the library because I just want to read the mess I’ve heard so much about. Only a few hours in, and the lack of self-awareness and just how unethical and fucked up Gilbert is in her own account of this scenario is wild.