CBR16 Bingo – Liberate: In this exploration of her early adulthood, Beach liberates herself from the petty dramas of her past – especially when it comes to closing the chapter of her toxic friendship with Caroline Calloway.
Natalie Beach might have shot to viral fame with her confession to being the ex-best friend and ghost-writer for an infamous influencer, but in this book she takes us on a tour of various other facets of her coming of age, from working in a pencil store to living in a crooked apartment in New York City to volunteering as an escort at an abortion clinic.
I am notoriously Behind The Times when it comes to Internet celebrities, but I did manage to stumble across Caroline Calloway basically right before Beach’s essay about their friendship hit the Internet, so I suppose I made it to the party just in time this time round. That I was on the verge of my own diagnosis of mental illness as I scrolled through those endlessly glamorous posts seems ironically apt in hindsight. Anyway, Beach’s confessional essay cast all that in a completely new light – and left me with all sorts of thorny, interesting questions about who has the right to tell stories.
This book of essays, branching into some of Beach’s other experiences and preoccupations, brings that off-kilter slant to plenty of other topics. Her topics are nothing out of the ordinary – I too have been a shopgirl, am a thrift store enthusiast (and once crocheted myself a colorful scarf from the yarn and pattern left behind by a dead woman who I obviously never met) – but where the collection shines is how Beach can make each story seem distinct and multi-faceted, polished to a shine so that different sides of it gleam at you all at once, many of them enjoyably contradictory.
The trouble with writing about fairly mundane experiences is that where Beach stumbles, the essay becomes rather dull. For example, the essays about low-rise jeans and her first apartment sank without a trace – that first essay especially, which felt like an odd choice as the opening chapter when there’s much stronger ones later on in the book. Beach’s authorial voice might take a bit more maturing, but I’m excited to see what she comes out with when it has.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
