Cinthia Ritchie
Author of Dolls Behaving Badly
Works by Cinthia Ritchie
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Date of death
- Not sure yet
- Gender
- female
- Education
- MFA, University of Alaska Anchorage; BS, Western Michigan University
- Occupations
- writer
journalist
novelist - Agent
- Elizabeth Wales
- Short biography
- Cinthia Ritchie is an Alaska writer, ultra-runner and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Find her work at New York Times Magazine, Evening Street Review, Sport Literate, Rattle, Best American Sports Writing, Mary, Into the Void, Clementine Unbound, Deaf Poets Society, Forgotten Women anthology, Nasty Women anthology, Gyroscope Review, Bosque Literary Journal, The Hunger Journal and others. She's a 2013 Best American Essay notable mention, and her first novel "Dolls Behaving Badly" was published by Hachette Book Group.
- Places of residence
- Anchorage, Alaska, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- Alaska, USA
Members
Reviews
When I started reading Cinthia Ritchie’s novel Dolls Behaving Badly I immediately thought, “Oh, my son’s fiancée will love this book.” Then I thought, “Mom will want to read this book.”
It starts off like fun chick lit. A single mom of a genius 8-year-old son needs to figure out how to pay her bills on her waitress salary and find love and happiness from a trailer in Alaska.
Luckily for me, before I sent a link to them, the dolls entered the book. Just in time, I stayed my hand (I show more know the phrase doesn’t belong outside the Bible or historical romances, but this is where it gets a little “Biblical”). The protagonist, Carla Richards, is not just a server, but also an artist, and retired Barbie and Ken dolls serve her art. She hacks and appends to them, all for a very “upscale” erotic website.
Although I didn’t send out the link, I kept reading because the last thing this book is is porn. It’s a well-crafted story of how Carla and the “family” she builds around her grow and change with dignity.
Ritchie know how to tell a story that is both accessible and thought-provoking. Sometimes the book stuns me with a lyrical phrase or brilliant notion. She uses some contemporary stylistic experiments quite well. For instance, Carla is writing her diary in tandem with reading the philosophies of an inspirational speaker known as The Oprah Giant. She’s haunted by the ghost of her dead Polish grandmother and is still friends with her ex, a chef. The recipes of both these characters are translated by Carla and the recipes supplied for the reader.
If it were a movie, the book would be called a comedy, maybe even a romantic comedy, but as written word it is much more than that. The book probes and examines our hopes and fears without letting us know that’s what it’s doing. Dolls Behaving Badly is not lightweight or superficial. It accesses the hidden areas of the mind and of the heart.
I still think my mother and future daughter-in-law would love this book, but I can hear the comments (“My mom gave you a book with WHAT kind of dolls?”). Maybe I could send it to them anonymously?
I first gave it 4 stars because I wanted to give it 4.5 and then changed it to 5 because that seemed unfair. My rating is 4.5!!! show less
It starts off like fun chick lit. A single mom of a genius 8-year-old son needs to figure out how to pay her bills on her waitress salary and find love and happiness from a trailer in Alaska.
Luckily for me, before I sent a link to them, the dolls entered the book. Just in time, I stayed my hand (I show more know the phrase doesn’t belong outside the Bible or historical romances, but this is where it gets a little “Biblical”). The protagonist, Carla Richards, is not just a server, but also an artist, and retired Barbie and Ken dolls serve her art. She hacks and appends to them, all for a very “upscale” erotic website.
Although I didn’t send out the link, I kept reading because the last thing this book is is porn. It’s a well-crafted story of how Carla and the “family” she builds around her grow and change with dignity.
Ritchie know how to tell a story that is both accessible and thought-provoking. Sometimes the book stuns me with a lyrical phrase or brilliant notion. She uses some contemporary stylistic experiments quite well. For instance, Carla is writing her diary in tandem with reading the philosophies of an inspirational speaker known as The Oprah Giant. She’s haunted by the ghost of her dead Polish grandmother and is still friends with her ex, a chef. The recipes of both these characters are translated by Carla and the recipes supplied for the reader.
If it were a movie, the book would be called a comedy, maybe even a romantic comedy, but as written word it is much more than that. The book probes and examines our hopes and fears without letting us know that’s what it’s doing. Dolls Behaving Badly is not lightweight or superficial. It accesses the hidden areas of the mind and of the heart.
I still think my mother and future daughter-in-law would love this book, but I can hear the comments (“My mom gave you a book with WHAT kind of dolls?”). Maybe I could send it to them anonymously?
I first gave it 4 stars because I wanted to give it 4.5 and then changed it to 5 because that seemed unfair. My rating is 4.5!!! show less
Cinthia Ritchie’s memoir Malnourished is a strange and beautiful trek into the heart of a family. Ritchie has three sisters, and all four girls/women have been tragically affected by their upbringing in a home with a predatory stepfather, a mother who will not see the truth, and a deceased father.
While Ritchie’s sister’s death from anorexia is the catalyst for the book, the subject is Ritchie’s survival story. She shares how she and her sister Deena grew up together, how their show more relationship expanded and contracted over time, how she and Deena diverged in their responses to life, and where they were similar. While Ritchie claims never to have been an anorexic, she has a complicated relationship with food. Ritchie has exhibited starvation and other dangerous symptoms of emotional distress and control over her body. In this memoir, Ritchie manages to open up a space where we can think, discuss, soul-search human relationships with food as emotionally-charged metaphor and how that power plays out on our bodies.
Reading this story gave me insight into how personalities and desires are shaped by experience. For example, Ritchie is a serious runner who craves being outdoors. By reading Malnourished, I was able to feel what it would be like to need to run, to sleep outside under the stars. A small bedroom offers no place for a child to run from a menace that lurks inside the house, one which makes the walls complicit with the stepfather.
What I’ve written here might sound like Ritchie explains all this in the book. While she does reflect on her experiences, her gorgeous, lyrical writing does not “tell” the reader, so much as allow the reader into her world to figure things out for herself. Most importantly, Ritchie’s generosity in baring herself for scrutiny and understanding is such a gift to every reader.
Malnourished is not a comfortable read. It’s a work of art that nudges readers from our comfortable seats, from the comforting ways our minds purposefully arrange our interior landscapes. The beauty of the way Ritchie arranges her words will keep you going even through the darkest passages.
show less
While Ritchie’s sister’s death from anorexia is the catalyst for the book, the subject is Ritchie’s survival story. She shares how she and her sister Deena grew up together, how their show more relationship expanded and contracted over time, how she and Deena diverged in their responses to life, and where they were similar. While Ritchie claims never to have been an anorexic, she has a complicated relationship with food. Ritchie has exhibited starvation and other dangerous symptoms of emotional distress and control over her body. In this memoir, Ritchie manages to open up a space where we can think, discuss, soul-search human relationships with food as emotionally-charged metaphor and how that power plays out on our bodies.
Reading this story gave me insight into how personalities and desires are shaped by experience. For example, Ritchie is a serious runner who craves being outdoors. By reading Malnourished, I was able to feel what it would be like to need to run, to sleep outside under the stars. A small bedroom offers no place for a child to run from a menace that lurks inside the house, one which makes the walls complicit with the stepfather.
What I’ve written here might sound like Ritchie explains all this in the book. While she does reflect on her experiences, her gorgeous, lyrical writing does not “tell” the reader, so much as allow the reader into her world to figure things out for herself. Most importantly, Ritchie’s generosity in baring herself for scrutiny and understanding is such a gift to every reader.
Malnourished is not a comfortable read. It’s a work of art that nudges readers from our comfortable seats, from the comforting ways our minds purposefully arrange our interior landscapes. The beauty of the way Ritchie arranges her words will keep you going even through the darkest passages.
show less
An eating disorder is a complicated illness. The mental pain is excruciating, the toll on the body long-term and often deadly, and to the individual and those who love them, the guilt is devastating. Cinthia Ritchie’s Malnourished: A Memoir of Sisterhood and Hunger is an example, a true story of how two women’s lives, beginning in childhood, are set on paths from which one will never recover and the other will be forever touched, yet survive.
When their father died, their mother remarried show more and Cinthia, Deena, their two sisters and mother moved to their stepfather’s farm in Pennsylvania. While Deena and Cinthia’s daily life was idyllic, running and playing in the woods, nearby stream and farmland, their nighttime was filled with terror as their stepfather sexually abused them and their mother turned a blind eye. To cope both young girls developed issues with food, Deena’s later turning into a dangerous and eventually fatal eating disorder, both turned to cutting themselves, and Cinthia found it difficult to form lasting relationships with men.
I found the writing to be absolutely beautiful, almost poetic at times, particularly when the author was talking about her relationship to and with nature. My difficulty with the book was the constant jumping around in time and place. I found it hard to follow at times and felt it detracted from the otherwise moving testament to her sister. Malnourished has its place in eating disorder literature, not only by drawing our attention to a person’s personal struggle with an ED, but also to some of the other battles (cutting, relationship issues) that may accompany one. show less
When their father died, their mother remarried show more and Cinthia, Deena, their two sisters and mother moved to their stepfather’s farm in Pennsylvania. While Deena and Cinthia’s daily life was idyllic, running and playing in the woods, nearby stream and farmland, their nighttime was filled with terror as their stepfather sexually abused them and their mother turned a blind eye. To cope both young girls developed issues with food, Deena’s later turning into a dangerous and eventually fatal eating disorder, both turned to cutting themselves, and Cinthia found it difficult to form lasting relationships with men.
I found the writing to be absolutely beautiful, almost poetic at times, particularly when the author was talking about her relationship to and with nature. My difficulty with the book was the constant jumping around in time and place. I found it hard to follow at times and felt it detracted from the otherwise moving testament to her sister. Malnourished has its place in eating disorder literature, not only by drawing our attention to a person’s personal struggle with an ED, but also to some of the other battles (cutting, relationship issues) that may accompany one. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.I struggled with this. There are parts of this memoir that are searing, choking, enveloping, in the best way. There are parts where she says she is unreliable, that her memories may be lies. There are parts that are so ridiculous they must be lies, but some of those scenes are upsetting, too. It's uneven. Again, parts are great. Parts are troubling. But generally it didn't work for me.
{possible tw} Why would you lie about what happened after your abortion? I know you didn't get to take the show more tissue home with you. It doesn't accomplish anything the way that the hazy memories of childhood might. I found this especially upsetting because I've had two D&Cs for pregnancy losses. I struggled to even finish the book after this. It's so blatantly mendacious!
I think this memoir was cathartic for the author -- at least I hope it was. It wants to be Roxane Gay's Hunger, in which sexual violence turns into disordered eating in the opposite direction. But it isn't as strong.
There's a person this book is for. But it wasn't for me. show less
{possible tw} Why would you lie about what happened after your abortion? I know you didn't get to take the show more tissue home with you. It doesn't accomplish anything the way that the hazy memories of childhood might. I found this especially upsetting because I've had two D&Cs for pregnancy losses. I struggled to even finish the book after this. It's so blatantly mendacious!
I think this memoir was cathartic for the author -- at least I hope it was. It wants to be Roxane Gay's Hunger, in which sexual violence turns into disordered eating in the opposite direction. But it isn't as strong.
There's a person this book is for. But it wasn't for me. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.Statistics
- Works
- 2
- Members
- 55
- Popularity
- #295,339
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 13
- ISBNs
- 4
- Favorited
- 1
