Rating: 
Summary: Definitely worth a read
Review: Ms. Fraser takes you through all the emotions of her trials, turmoils, joys and sorrows. Some of her essays, though sad, never left me depressed. Instead, I felt hopeful and as if I'd somehow witnessed the triumph of healing. The best thing about this collection of essays is the honesty and candid manner in which the stories are told...so much so that I felt myself giggling about human nature. I devoured the book, cover to cover. The only thing that I think it's missing is more pages. I highly recommend this memoir to anyone who has the courage to live in reality. PLEASE WRITE MORE JOELLE...we are so proud of you!!! You make us feel famous!
Rating:
Summary: Talented writer needs to bare her own feelings
Review: This young woman stumbles through life obsessively pursuing her own happiness, and seems surprised that she never finds it. Blonde, slender, intelligent, and skilled at manipulating men, she frequents dive bars in Hawaii and San Francisco, attends college, and blames her parents because she isn't happier. Perhaps the price she pays for her independence is that she never really cares about what happens to anybody else. Has she ever thought about people who had it much, much worse than she? You'd never know it from this book.Fraser's memoir is most engrossing when she describes growing up in the free-form, no-rules, do-your-own-thing culture that flourished in California during the 60's and 70's. Continually shuffled between her alcoholic father and man-crazed mother, she is deprived of the stability that she obviously desperately needs. More than once, we get the premonition that something awful is going to happen to her, but unless this reviewer is failing to read between the lines, she never encounters anything worse than that which most adolescents deal with on a consistent basis. The chapter on her experience teaching in the medium security prison provides a good example: we see the chance she is taking just by being there; trouble breaks out and she runs towards it rather than away, but in the end nothing bad actually happens to her. More interesting might have been a book about her mother, who actually suffers from some of the problems that Fraser only references second-hand. We are told that there were drunken orgies, a continual stream of men, substantial physical abuse, a number of failed marriages, a victory over alcoholism, and a developing interest in Native Americans, but usually the little girl in the background is sent off to her room, and doesn't really have much in the way of insights or information to share with us. Another missed opportunity is the section on her cousin Karyn, who was murdered (by being stabbed forty-two times) by her boyfriend. A little investigative reporting might have been in order here, because the bare facts we get don't really explain very much. The lessons that Fraser draws from the story are significant enough, but one is reminded of a number of great writers who have done entire books about murders that were no more brutal than this one. This is by no means a bad piece of writing, but it seldom manages to evoke the empty decadence of the times. Most of the book is far more personal than historical, providing an overview of this young woman's relationship with her parents without betraying any really powerful emotions. Doesn't she resent her parents for raising her like a circus animal? Isn't she angry about the way they ship her back and forth, from one school to another, never letting her grow comfortable anywhere? Some genuine emotion might lend pathos to a document that, viewed from the outside, isn't really that noteworthy. Let's hope that this talented writer's next effort finds her able to penetrate past her own cool exterior, and dig at the roots of what she's really feeling.
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