i'm glad my mom died -- 100% review

i've wanted to read this book for a long time, thanks to a tiktok suggestion at least a year ago now. it was a simple excerpt, recounting a time when jenette's mom expected to know what flavor of ice cream she wanted, and reacted badly to discovering that jenette had a mind of her own. it says so much, in just that small excerpt. what her mom expected of her. what jenette felt she had to do to survive. from that segment alone, i knew i needed to hear what jennette mccurdy had to say. this book is honest and simple; the plain, unadorned text narrates a haggard and tumultuous life with straightforward elegance. it demands no pity and offers no salvation; only offers a life lived and asks that we not flinch.

i won't dwell much on what the contents of this book are. it feels irreverent and profane to attempt to flatten this sequence of moments, to call it a narrative and critique the elements of storytelling. i want to be very clear on that. this is someone's life. this is jenette mccurdy's life. perhaps not all of it, and perhaps revised for readability, perhaps organized by event structure and not necessarily by chronology. all i really have to say is that i'm grateful that she wrote this book, and narrated it, and let me hear about the life she lived and the struggles that she navigated. and that i wish her the very best in her future endeavors.