Jennette McCurdy

Ok, I caved in to the hype and listened to it mostly because I had a few days left on my Scribd membership which I failed to cancel last month (need to get some benefit out of it, shan't I?). I am usually very skeptical about overhyped books and this one appeared for me just like that. I had not heard anything of Jennette, iCarly or why this book was instantly sold out when it came out in the US. I live far away from it all.

But well.. I binged-listened to it in 3 days and now I feel I'll show more miss Jenette and her slightly ironic voice and how she matter-of-factly talks about very difficult topics. It's a brutally honest memoir of what the life of a child star really looked like. I am really glad her mom died and she could start to regain control over her life. I am also really happy that her book has become such a success because it deserves it and SHE deserves it. Even if she hates acting, her performance of the audiobook is top notch - one of the best I've listened to! The audiobook version is highly recommended.

Five stars without a doubt. show less

I love reading about other people's lives - perhaps because I don't have one, haha - but occasionally the story being told makes me thankful to be me. Jennette McCurdy, a former teen actor on Nickelodeon who I must admit I'd never heard of, went through hell with her narcissistic and abusive mother, who forced her daughter into acting to fulfil a fantasy of her own, and the effects of that relationship had emotional and physical consequences for Jennette long after her mother's premature show more death from breast cancer.

Jennette has an engaging and darkly humorous narrative style, describing life in an 'inactive' Mormon household with an overbearing mother whose hoarding forced her five children to sleep on mats in the lounge to facing further abuse by a studio exec and developing anorexia and bulimia in an attempt to control her life, but her life makes for hard reading. Even her boyfriend had a psychotic episode and announced that he was Jesus reincarnated!

I'm glad that Jennette has found success and happiness now, and she is very brave for sharing such a private and painful account of her battles, but I didn't expect such a frothy pastel cover to contain such distressing memories (although the title should probably have been a clue!) show less

Content warning for abuse, assault, eating disorders, substance abuse, and probably other things I'm forgetting.

I had no idea who Jennette McCurdy was, prior to reading this. Although I did watch Nickelodeon growing up, I'm old enough that iCarly wasn't one of the shows I watched. I googled it a bit while reading this book, and I still think the "buttersock" thing sounds bizarre.

I read this for several reasons: 1) It seems to be pretty popular right now (which, true, would usually make me show more pass it by), 2) some folks at work were talking about it and got me interested, and 3) that title. Even then, I worried it'd be a bit of a slog. I don't normally gravitate towards memoirs.

There's a quote on the cover that calls this book "Impressively funny." Add the title and, not knowing anything about McCurdy, I thought this might be a dark humor book. I could imagine potential readers flinching away from it, perhaps thinking it mean-spirited.

I did not expect that a book with a title like this one would begin with McCurdy and her brothers crying at their mother's bedside while she was in a coma. But here's the thing: there's a lot packed into the title. It represents years of horrible experiences, as well as hard-won efforts at healing that almost certainly wouldn't have been possible without McCurdy's mother's death.

McCurdy's mother had wanted to be an actress, but her parents disapproved. Instead of being inspired to encourage her daughter's aspirations, she forced her own goals onto her daughter. She made her children watch footage from the time she was diagnosed with cancer and critiqued their emotional reactions - good children would have been properly grief-stricken, and 2-year-old McCurdy's was therefore clearly not a good daughter. McCurdy grew up with her mother as the focus of her world. Even her personal preferences, like her favorite color or preferred ice cream flavor, were determined based on what would make her mother most happy.

Some moments were utterly horrifying. When McCurdy was 11, her mother basically taught her how to have an eating disorder, leading to years of anorexia and then bulimia. Also, she wouldn't let her wash her own hair, and she would do breast and genital "checks" on McCurdy in the shower. I believe McCurdy was 16 during the one described in this book.

In addition to the stuff about McCurdy's mother, Nickelodeon doesn't come off looking great. From the sounds of things, the Creator (whose name is easy enough to look up, but I'll refer to him the way McCurdy did in her book) should have been ousted many years earlier than he was.

I was not expecting this to be so compulsively readable, even as parts of it made my skin crawl. I'm glad that McCurdy was able to get to the point where she could recognize the damage that had been done to her and start to heal.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Audiobook read by the author

6-year-old Jennette does not want to be an actress, but her mother does and she will do anything to make her mother happy. She continues to try to make her mother happy for the next 20 years. Her mother wants to keep piles of stuff in their house, and for Jennette to remain a little girl forever. She enrolls Jennette in a dozen acting classes and dance classes, and teaches her how to restrict the amount of calories she eats to stay small. Their codependency and show more the abuse continues throughout Jennette’s life and acting career, until her mother dies of cancer. But the trauma remains, and it takes Jennette a long time to come to terms with what she’s been through.

This is a really interestingly constructed memoir. Every short vignette is presented in the present -tense, with no hindsight at all. That's very different from what I'm used to, but it works well here where the sword of Damocles throughout is Jennette’s eventual realization of her mother's abuse. It also works well because McCurdy is still young, and will surely have more hindsight when she's older, but she's been through so much already and I imagine it was really cathartic to write it all down in such a straightforward way.

I am only a couple years older than McCurdy, but I didn't watch Nickelodeon and was only vaguely familiar with her work. As a society we often think of actors, especially celebrity actors, including child actors, as deserving of whatever odd and stressful life they have to live and whatever maltreatment or harassment that they get. It's fascinating to read the perspective of someone who very much did not want to be there, even if it took her a while to realize that. On the other hand, she adapted very well to that weird environment because it was so similar to the volatility of her home life.

This book is perfectly structured for the audiobook format, with dozens of short (5min) chapters. McCurdy is not a perfect narrator (she talks much faster than I’m used to) but there’s no one better to tell her story than her. I hope she gets to write a whole lot more, if that’s what she wants to do. show less