Publishers Weekly
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Multimedia artist Tendler (The Daily Face) recounts her struggles with mental illness and low self-esteem in this devastating personal history. She begins in 2021, when, at 35, she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital at her therapist’s urging. From there, she weaves in flashbacks that describe, in wrenching detail, her teenage experiences with self-harm (“I am not sure how I landed on cutting... but I am certain I would have found my way to injurious behavior eventually”) and a high school relationship that made her “a girl who, well into adulthood, would contort and conform to the desires of a man, overlooking his easy dismissal, and dampening self-worth, all to be loved.” Much of the account examines a string of failed romances that eroded Tendler’s self-worth, including teenage sexual experiences with much older men. (Her marriage to comedian John Mulaney is only ever alluded to.) She also discusses daily life in the psych ward, and the peace brought to her by her dog, Petunia, before she checked in. After contextualizing her depression as a partial by-product of a turbulent childhood spent witnessing blowout fights between her parents, Tendler ends on a hopeful note (“Life has in no way gotten easier..... But I’ve become sturdier”). In a sea of mental health memoirs, this stands out. Agent: Meg Thompson, Thompson Literary. (Aug.)

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From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Struggling with depression, restrictive eating, cutting, and suicidal ideation about a year into the pandemic, photographer and writer Tendler was scaring even herself and checked into a mental-health facility. The two weeks she spent there, particularly the care and diagnoses she received and the other women patients she met there, frame this companionable memoir that also charts Tendler's coming-of-age and relationship history. (Outside of oblique mentions of a divorce occurring in the background, there's no mention of Tendler's high-profile marriage to a famous comedian, which feels like an odd flyover, but Tendler has other stories to tell.) The author's fellow millennials will likely relate to her experiences of growing up in the girls-can-be-anything 1990s, and all the contradictions therein, and many readers will see themselves in her first relationships, which were more about feeling liked than feeling good. Special page space goes to Petunia, the French bulldog Tendler loved, lost, and learned from. Tendler even shares her anger with warmth in this instructive, accepting view of owning and coping with one's always-evolving mental health.