crabbygirl reviewed Growing up Grogan by John Grogan
Review of 'Growing up Grogan' on 'Goodreads'
1 star
this author did marley and me (which i found sentimental and contrived) but my mom loved this title so i wanted to give him another chance.
I got the book on audioCD to make him easier to take. hmmm. maybe that was a bad idea. read by the author himself, the delivery was terrible, and often times didn't seem plausible - even though he was supposedly reading his own words/thoughts! (for example, i was certain he was mispronouncing st francis of assisi)
when the book got to his college years and young adult part of life, i found him to be an absolute cad!
remember that he himself is writing his memoir and could have attempted to explain his reasoning, or felt bad about it in retrospect... he tells of how he had a younger, steady girlfriend the summer before he leaves for college but one night has the chance …
this author did marley and me (which i found sentimental and contrived) but my mom loved this title so i wanted to give him another chance.
I got the book on audioCD to make him easier to take. hmmm. maybe that was a bad idea. read by the author himself, the delivery was terrible, and often times didn't seem plausible - even though he was supposedly reading his own words/thoughts! (for example, i was certain he was mispronouncing st francis of assisi)
when the book got to his college years and young adult part of life, i found him to be an absolute cad!
remember that he himself is writing his memoir and could have attempted to explain his reasoning, or felt bad about it in retrospect... he tells of how he had a younger, steady girlfriend the summer before he leaves for college but one night has the chance to lose his virginity to his highschool girlfriend and does so. then he continues with his existing girlfriend like nothing happened, finally taking her virginity while they are both in college (she chooses his college to be with him when given old enough to attend).
and at no time does he come clean!
lies, lies, lies!
ultimately, i mostly found the book uneven. i've read much better memoirs of catholic childhood (think wally lamb, frank mc court) and yet there were a few moments of his post-catholic life that were spot on - like reaching for prayer in times of great despair, and feeling absolutely foolish performing rituals like the sign of the cross that must accompany such a prayer.
like marley and me, which solely concentrated on his relationship with a dog, this book focused it's attention on his relationship with his parents at the detriment of the matrix of relationships that we actually inhabit:
what about his siblings and the unequal care they gave to his aging parents?
how did his own children view their grandparents and the relationship between adult children and parents?
his wife had an uneasy relationship with these people that practiced almost a cult of catholicism; how did that affect their marrige?
i found these silences too awkward to ignore. and one almost deafening silence: the few paragraphs disliking the brother-run catholic high school, and his parents subsequent strange and not-truly-explained decision to let him switch to public school.
sadly, I think he was a victim of the prevalent sexual abuse of that time; he just couldn't bring himself to put that in the memoir.