An Elegant Woman

While the narrative was engaging enough for me to complete this book, it isn't something I'd recommend to anyone or anything that really stuck with me. The author's narrative style is a bit much at times - overly dramatic in places, and the way she describes other women is odd. There's really no other way for me to describe it, but every description of another woman involved a strange layer of bitterness.

One thing that definitely ruined this book for me was the perverse description of Winter (her mother) as a 13-year-old girl. Just before a particularly disturbing scene with Lavern, the author describes Winter's body in oddly sexual tones. I didn't think this was in any way necessary, and as someone who was genuinely triggered by the inclusion of the following scene, the author's voluntary description of a child's body in that context felt as if she were promoting what was to come. It was just inappropriate and it definitely resulted in me speed-reading through the rest of the book to get it over with.

The book rounds off with an extra dose of cringe - the present-day description of the narrator's teenage daughter explaining the ins-and-outs of Snapchat while her son rattles off random, out-of-context slang. You know, the classic “kids these days” bullshit.

All in all, this read like a college entry personal essay, with unnecessarily dramatic tones, the romanticization of the mundane, and a general tone of narcissism.