Caden Bertrando

this book is so frustrating. Gina is abnoxious.

Revisado: 12-21-22

Okay ... I had very strong negative feelings towards this book - negative feelings that I haven't felt towards a book in a long time. I was really excited about picking this one up; I love unreliable narrators, complicated girlies, memoirs, feminism, etc etc etc. But oh my god. Gina ... I don't even know what to say about this incredibly self-indulgent memoir.

First of all, I was thrown off in the first essay, The Story of A, when she refers to Hillary Clinton as the "most qualified presidential candidate in history" ... And later on she recalls Trump's inauguration as "the worst day of her life." Girlie is dripping with white liberalism/feminism throughout this book, which I found so damn irritating. There were maybe three or four lines in there where she mentions that people are discriminated against by "the color of their skin," and she mentions transgender women once, but ultimately, this was an extremely cis-white-liberal-woman narrative that did not delve into any sort of intersectional feminism whatsoever. Which is fine (kind of, honestly, maybe not) but "feminism" should be erased from the title tbh. It felt like she just learned what feminism was right before she wrote this, and boiled it down to the most stereotypical, blatantly obvious points she could find.

Second of all: everyone in this book sucks. Except for her children. Like genuinely Gina is such an unlikeable woman. She might be a "complex" woman, but she seems to have no real self-awareness. There are so many moral qualms I have with this book I don't even know where to begin. First of all, her children, who she 1) adopted from China even when she was in an abusive relationship with her husband because she believed she could give them better lives (white savior vibes) and 2) she proceeds to traumatize these girls by forcing them to keep her affair a secret from their father ... GINA. Please for the love of god.

Next, the entire affair situation. I am someone who believes that cheating on someone is one of the worst things you can do to a person, especially a person you claim to love. I was looking forward to reading a story from the cheater's perspective, as I thought there would be reflection, compassion, accountability, etc. There is not. Frangello is incredibly self-pitying throughout this book, she does not take accountability for her actions (though she pretends to in multiple cases), and she does not ever come to any meaningful conclusions. Towards the end of the book she talks about fearing that her ex-husband was going to murder her--which is honestly a fair fear to have--but the way she wrote about it all just felt so disingenuous.

At one point she is talking to her ex-husband and she says that "the only 'unstable personal relationship' I have ever had was ... with him" - and in that moment I was certain Gina had no fucking idea what she was talking about. GIRLIE. Literally every single relationship you have depicted in this book has been unstable.

Frangello obviously has many many regrets, all of which are understandable, but just because you express remorse for something does not mean you have done the work to heal.

I needed to put my rage for this book somewhere. I would not have finished this if I didn't read it for my book club tbh.

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