While reading Crazy Love by Leslie Morgan Steiner, I wanted more than anything for the book to be fiction. I wanted this in part because Leslie's story was sad and difficult and I wouldn't want anyone to suffer the injustices she described. But I also wanted it because the memoir was just so sloppily written that I wanted to just read it as a throwaway book.
Leslie writes about her first marriage in her early 20s to a man who first hit her five days before their wedding. She describes the violence inflicted on her during their honeymoon and also her isolation when they moved away from her friends and family to Vermont. Conor meets many hallmarks of an abuser-- he came from a family where he was abused and slowly controls Leslie, even though she doesn't think of herself as a "typical" battered wife. And in many ways, she's not what we think. She comes from an old, rich family, went to a prestigious college, interned at Seventeen magazine, went to business school. Not to be picky, but these are the exact reasons I wanted the book to be better written! The chronology was confusing, her's and Conor's characters were not multi-dimensional and there were some many inaccuracies (ie, Bostonians do not say "pop" for a Coke-- a detail, but if you're going to throw it in, it better be correct!).
I've read a couple memoirs in the past year or so. The best was An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination and the so-so was Trail of Crumbs. This leans more to the latter-- a need to get the story out.
I admire Leslie for telling her story and for the ultimate "happy ending" even though it wasn't as sophisticated as I would have liked. I'm giving it 3/5 netflix stars.
