Under normal conditions, you wouldn’t catch me dead reading the memoir of some starlet, but this book was praised by Godcock (you still around fella?) so I decided to give it a shot. I finished it in a couple of days.
The chapters were well stuctured, in the first half I felt like each chapter was an individual piece of a larger puzzle, each making some point, altogether constructing the environment of Jennette’s upbringing. I noted her repeated message that the child actors most prized were the ones who are not ‘difficult’ and can listen to directions, which suggests a systemic reason why child actors are at such high risk for abuse. Her account of her journey with eating disorders was interesting, because the whole world of eating disorders was totally foreign to me until reading her account. I just never really understood how people have so much trouble with eating, but I do now.
One thing I disliked is the ‘voice’ of the book; her sentences are abnormally short and rarely long, sometimes splitting a single thought over multiple short sentences. It was sometimes distracting and clunky. I noticed this early, and assumed this was like a ‘juvenile voice’ to draw attention to her thinking and feeling as a child, but as this carries on to the adult years I saw it was just how the book was written.
Writing style aside, the book was good. I struggle to say I ’enjoy’ it because it is a very personal and depressing book. Her account of her experience has an intrinsic value in that it shows the deep sickness behind media involving children.