Publicist Gift | Wiving: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Patriarchy

I received a free digital copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Rating ⭐⭐⭐

This book has taken me a long to review, and I am not sure why. I absolutely loved Educated by Tara Westover and this was similar in some ways, but completely different in most other ways. I don't want this to seem like I am comparing them, even though that is what it looks like I am doing. It is just that I am not quite sure how to describe how I could relate to one experience so much better than the other, despite the fact that my life could not be further from either of these experiences.

Caitlin Myer is an incredibly strong, brave, powerful woman. The courage it takes to confront her past, her family secrets, and drag all of those things out into the light is phenomenal. She details her strict Mormon upbringing, her mother's illnesses, and the family dynamic that she grew up in.

From early on, Myer's mom's health has a huge impact on her life. Her mother is sick and never leaves her bed most of the time. This of course also impacts the family as a whole, with the mom-sized space often vacant in their lives. Myer focuses on being the happy, dutiful child so that when sexual abuse occurs, she hides it. To accuse, to speak out against it, was simply unacceptable. So Myer hid it, exactly as anyone brought up in similar confines would have done.

However, those assaults also make Myer who she is, because of how she changed and grew after they occurred. So she has to contend with this image expected of a perfect Mormon wife, with the real person she is becoming. The two do not mesh. Myer realizes eventually she is not able to be, nor does she really want to be, that ideal. We then follow her journey as she leave the church, thus also leaving her family. There is so much to her story, and Myer must navigate the world once she leaves, figuring out what her own expectations are for her life. Previously, her expectations did not really matter. She would grow up, get married, be the perfect Mormon wife, have a couple children, and the cycle would repeat.

Except, once she left, she had this whole new sense of freedom, despite a past that still weighed her down, at times was so heavy that it was suffocating.

It was really hard for me to stay in the story. It was not the content itself, as I have read more than my fair share of uncomfortable truths. I think the main drawback for me is the writing style itself. Sometimes it is almost conversational, but then that conversation veers off and meanders and I had a difficult time sometimes catching up, or even wanting to catch up. Other times it was almost more like reading her journal, but still with the fragments and meandering. The writing made it hard to connect to the stories she was weaving. Other readers may likely enjoy this style more, but for me it did not work in this case. It is almost like the style is too light-hearted for such serious and painful topics.

Recommended for those who enjoy memoirs, especially memoirs having to do with leaving strict and religious upbringings, and who will not be triggered by content involving sexual assault.

A Roll of the Dice: A Memoir of a Hungarian Survivor

Tonight I had the profound honor of hearing a talk by Agnes Schwartz, who survived the horrors of war and the Holocaust as a young Jewish girl in Budapest. Her message was simple and consistent: Never forget. This can never happen again. She spoke of the deniers, and how when the last survivors are gone, it will up to future generations to know and teach those that come after them about this terrible crime against humanity; this way there will be no opportunity for the deniers to gain a foothold.

Many times I was in tears. She spoke of her happy childhood, growing up in a well-to-do family. Her parents owned their own business and Agnes went to school, excelled in academics and earned a place at a college prep gymnasium. She spoke lovingly of her family, her mother and father. Of her grandparents and spending summers with them in the country. And of Julia, her family's housekeeper, who had known Agnes since birth. But when the Nazis marched into Hungary - and Mrs Schwartz was very specific about this word, as Hungary was one of Germany's allies, and in a deep depression at the time - those happy days came to a sudden end. The deportations started in the countryside, and luckily Agnes' parents had moved her grandparents to Budapest at the time, so the family was together. They were moved from their comfortable apartment into a two-bedroom, cramped apartment a few blocks away. Agnes, her parents, and grandparents shared one bedroom, the other occupied by others Jewish people of no relation to Schwartz and her family. Not long after this move, Agnes' grandfather became ill. So ill, he was taken to a "hospital". Her last memory of her grandfather is him lying on a cot, in a long row of cots. Despite trying to find out what happened to him, she does not know if he died of his illness, or was murdered by the Nazis.

When deportations started in the city, men ages 18-45 were taken first. Agnes had to tell her father good bye. A few days later the Nazis came back, this time for the women in that same age range. Agnes recalled with perfect clarity saying good bye to her mother, her mother telling her to be a good girl. She would never see her mother again, as she died at Bergen-Belsen of 'natural causes', likely starvation and typhus. Agnes would not learn this until after the war. So for a time it was Agnes and her grandmother, in a tiny, shared apartment with little food and lots of bed bugs. One day a knock at the door brought a great surprise - her father. He'd escaped en route to Germany and when two Nazi officers were seeking directions to Budapest. Her father was fluent in German and as a result of him assisting the officers, he was not deported. When he learned that his wife had been taken away, he wanted to go after her, but both Agnes and her grandmother begged him to stay. He did.

A final knock at the door opened up an escape for Agnes. Her family's former housekeeper, Julia, was going to take Agnes with her and keep her from deportation. Agnes had blond hair, and so was passed off as Julia's niece from eastern Hungary. Her story was that her parents had sent her to Budapest to stay with her Aunt Julia as the Russians invaded. The plan worked and not a single person ever questioned the story.

I can not imagine living through the things that Agnes Schwartz survived. She ended up losing her grandmother as well as her aunt and uncle, all three having been moved into the ghetto. Even as the war was on its last legs and everyone knew the end was near, the Nazis were determined to kill as many Jews as possible. Agnes learned that her remaining family members had been taken to the Danube River, shot and left to die in the freezing water. She also spoke of how, as ammunition was running short, the Nazis would tie ten people together at a time with wire, shoot one, and they all would fall into the river together killing ten people with one bullet. Schwartz spoke of how whenever she hears someone talk of the 'Blue Danube', she thinks of it as the 'Red Danube', filled with the blood of innocent Jews, murdered for their only crime of being born Jewish. When the bombings of Budapest finally stopped as the Russians liberated the city, Mrs Schwartz recalled those first moments coming up from the basement of Julia's apartment building, having lived in almost total darkness for nearly two months as bombs were dropped day and night and they had little light inside except for candles. She spoke of first going outside, how bright it was and the stench that even now she says has never left her nose, the smell of death with bodies strewn about the streets. 

Easy to see why I was in tears much of the night, no?

After Mrs Schwartz spoke about her experiences surviving the war, her immigration to the US and her life up to this point, she took some questions from the audience, then signed copies of her memoir.

I waited in line with my friends, and when it was my turn, I asked if I could hold her hand. I clasped her hand between my own, and she patted the top of mine. I did not know what else to say, but "Thank you." I told her thank you, for sharing your story, for passing this on to those who have come after you. I must have said thank you five times. We chatted briefly, and she asked my name before signing my book.

This interaction, these experiences with living history, people who have survived these greatly traumatic events, must continue to happen. Hearing a survivor tell their own story is so much more powerful than reading a chapter from a text book. Every day there are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors left in the world. We must hear their stories before they are gone, and continue to pass them on.

Survivors Stories of the Titanic

Rating: 4 Stars

Review:

I feel kind of wrong in reviewing or even rating this one. I mean, seriously, how do you review someone's recollection of what is likely the worst night of their lives? A tragedy of this magnitude can't really even be imagined by those who did not experience it, no matter how many times we might watch Jack and Rose trying to survive.

This neat little volume is a compilation of three accounts of the sinking - Colonel Gracie, Second Officer Lightoller, and Harold Bride, the assistant radio operator.

Colonel Gracie's account is first and the most detailed - also very objective. It is certainly unlike new texts written about the sinking that play on emotion. It is very detailed, and but also almost technical - perhaps that does not make a lot of sense, but it might should you decide to pick this one up. Gracie's account begins far before the sinking, and we get glimpses of several other passengers, including some brief commentary on Mr. and Mrs. Straus. They became more real - and their story that much more heartbreaking, when here we are given a new account instead of the usual anecdote about how Mrs. Straus refused to leave her husband's side and so they both perished. I have always found it especially heartbreaking that though she refused to leave him, even in death they were still separated, as her body was never recovered.

Naturally for those who do still enjoy the movie, there will always be the habit of comparing the film to real-life accounts. I found myself a little disappointed in Office Lowe based on testimonies given at the British and American Inquiries, which were relayed in at least in part in Gracie's account. In the movie, Lowe is the one to start lashing the lifeboats together and shuffling passengers in order to return to pick up any survivors from the water. But varying accounts given disagree on certain aspects - disparaging remarks made about those not 'worthy' of rescue and such. Other testimonies claim he acted with the utmost care and respect. I'd like to believe the latter. 

My thoughts as I finished Gracie's account add up to this: No matter how may times I read about it, it still infuriates me as to how few people were placed in some of the lifeboats. I hear Victor Garber's voice echoing in my head every time with his line, "Rubbish! They were tested in Belfast with the weight of 70 men! Now, fill these boats, Mr. Lightoller, for God's sake man!" I like that he used testimony from both Inquiries, and I wish Ismay had shown half the courage that Captain Smith had in going down with the ship.

I enjoyed Lightoller's account as much as I did Gracie's, inasmuch as you can enjoy the subject matter. It was interesting to have a crew member's perspective to compare to that of a passenger. I found this quote to be fitting, as I have always had a special spot in my heart for the much-maligned-by-some Captain Smith, "Captain 'EJ" was one of the ablest skippers on the Atlantic, and accusations of recklessness, carelessness, not taking due precautions, or driving his ship at too high a speed, were absolutely, and utterly unfounded; but the armchair complaint is a very common disease, and generally accepted as one of the necessary evils from which the seafarer is condemned to suffer." Though Lightoller's account was much shorter, it was still very sound and full of detail. As the highest ranking officer to survive, I think we can and should take his word at face value and stop putting all blame on Captain Smith.

The final section was brief, just a few pages. Bride was the assistant Marconi operator and his account of the night, though short, gave us a good view of Jack Phillips, who worked ceaselessly until the last possible moment to try and summon any possible help that he could. Like the stories of the band continuing to play, I find Phillips actions heroic. He continued sending out distress signals a full fifteen minutes after being released from his duties by Captain Smith. it is a shame that having survived the ship going under, he was unable to survive the night. But, we have Bride's account here to ensure that his bravery is not forgotten.

I definitely recommend this collection for those who love Titanic history. It was a refreshing change of pace to read survivor accounts as opposed to the rehashing of the tragedy by historians today, who are quick to quote survivors and then put their own spin on the information.

Bossypants

Author: Tina Fey

Rating: 3 stars

Review:

I did not actually write a review for this on Goodreads but I am writing one now. Truthfully, it is because I was really disappointed in the book, which I realize goes against my rating system. I LOVE Tina Fey. She is hilarious and awesome and I adore her. But I did not adore this book. I don't know what it was, but it just wasn't quite right for me. I certainly did not expect it to be funnier, because one can not expect to laugh all the time through everything. I don't know, there is just something I can't quite put my finger on that made this less than stellar for me. But alas, because I do love her work as a whole so much, I couldn't bring myself to rate it lower than a 3. If I am being objective and pushing adoration aside and not thinking about Liz Lemon and Weekend Updates and Sarah Palin impersonations, then it is a solid two-star rating. But since I am human and not a robot, those characters, among others, come into play. The best I can say is, give it a try yourself and see what you think if you find Tina as funny as I do. You might easily come away with a different impression.