TW: Childhood abuse, eating disorders

I read this one back in November 2022 and sat on it a while. I think the issue I had, which was nothing to do with the book at all, was that people said it was funny. They remarked, favorably, on the humor and care that went into the book. I apparently just read it differently. I think anyone who was been in some of the same situations would.

First of all, I loved this book. When I picked it up I’d been in a rut and was doing this thing of reading mindlessly. I would skim books then put them down. This book, however, I read every word. I am one of those people who downloads samples of books, first chapters, before I decide to commit. I downloaded this one impulsively while being my insomnia self and within twenty-four hours I had read the whole thing.

Jeannette McCurdy carefully details a dream so many impoverished families have–that one of their kids makes it. Big. In spite of the odds. And that includes a parent who will do anything to make it happen. I was struck by the tenderness McCurdy describes her mother with, particularly in a few biting scenes—her mother’s fond joy when McCurdy becomes concerned that she may age out of her Nickelodeon stardom and happily teaches her about calorie restriction to prevent growth. McCurdy describes it as something her mother seemed to have been waiting for all along. McCurdy details some of the techniques and rules, being taught to lie to doctors and how, by her mother, to support her eating disorder. She also describes casually pulling out one of her own teeth later on.

Another stand-out scene was McCurdy firing her therapist, someone she had come to rely on and confide in who accompanied her to events as an adult to help her manage her bulimia I’m public, after a particularly emotional trigger. She simply walks off and never speaks to her again because the painful power of the trigger outweighs the benefit of her support system.

There are so many points in the memoir where you think ‘well what else can happen to her’ and I didn’t particularly find it funny at all, more like I saw that vein of humor that many of us with abusive childhoods and eating disorders adopt. 

I that what’s most significant about the book is the conversations it starts and the depiction of poverty in America that is all too common and too rarely displayed for what it is.