One of the sources for new to me books (usually but not always nonfiction and memoirs) are the various podcasts I listen to. This was a book discussed on an episode of Longform last year, and it sounded pretty interesting and like it might be something of an encouraging read for me, a person who at times cannot believe she's in her early forties simply because I didn't have any idea that this is what being 40 (or 41 or 42) could look like.
And well, it's KIND of an encouraging read in that way, but also not at all? The author is a very young GenXer, as opposed to be squarely in the no-man's land between the generations the way I am, and the main basis of her feeling like a late bloomer is that she wasn't married by the time her younger sister was, who also became a lawyer straight out of college, and I don't know! From a millennial standpoint her experience of grad school and chronically underpaid work in her twenties followed by good media jobs that were nevertheless unstable and fraught with sexism and old boys' clubs because: the media in her thirties followed by marriage and an eventual baby in her late thirties and early forties feels pretty standard! And I know that a memoir isn't about the technical reality of one's situation necessarily, it's about how it feels, but it was also the second book in a row that I read and had a feeling of....do I just not get how straight culture feels anymore.
So yeah! A perfectly readable book, but not one that spoke to me the way I had anticipated or hoped for.
Grade: B
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