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2.5 stars. The organization of this book is ultimately where I struggled the most. The timeline jumps around quite a bit and the story doesn't stay linear. Likewise, the experiences aren't grouped together in any kind of order. It felt quite random and a bit rambly. There is some good insight in here and the emotions are certainly presented well, but it didn't have a lot of cohesive structure for me. The mix of memoir and science was interesting and I did come to actually like that construction device, but I had a hard time teasing out solid thoughts as major premise points. This wandering type writing continued to the conclusion, which somewhat drifted off to an ending. I was left feeling rather unfulfilled, somewhat left out to dry.
Pieces of this short story were rather entertaining, but overall it just didn't give me enough substance. I did fall into a small rabbit hole of attempting to discover if this was written with true life influence as there were a couple of points that led me to think that the basis for the story line was related to the creation of Atwood's collaborative work, Fourteen Days.
There were a few references that allude to another author being problematic and wanting to be a part of Fern's short story collection that seem to point towards Neal Shusterman. There are two references that seem to point to Shusterman's novels Scythe and Dry along with descriptions of the problem author as being very famous and likable. It does also mention him to be a bit conceited, but I don't know enough about Shusterman as a person to say whether this character train would also point to the author. Now, whether or not my "tea theory" is really the case I cannot say, as no internet searches led to additional information to any of this, but knowing Atwood and her writing style I wouldn't be surprised to know that there are a few context clues lurking.
There were a few references that allude to another author being problematic and wanting to be a part of Fern's short story collection that seem to point towards Neal Shusterman. There are two references that seem to point to Shusterman's novels Scythe and Dry along with descriptions of the problem author as being very famous and likable. It does also mention him to be a bit conceited, but I don't know enough about Shusterman as a person to say whether this character train would also point to the author. Now, whether or not my "tea theory" is really the case I cannot say, as no internet searches led to additional information to any of this, but knowing Atwood and her writing style I wouldn't be surprised to know that there are a few context clues lurking.
2.5 stars. I just couldn't connect with this read. While there was a lot of very emotional writing, the organization of the information was very jumbled. As stated in many other reviews, the lack of a linear timeline just did not work for this memoir. Instead, it felt overly disjointed and the absence of a coherent flow detracted from the impact of the information being delivered. I appreciate the journey of Elliot Page, but just felt that the presentation left me plodding through the tale rather than being emotionally invested.
