I think the hardest reviews to write are about the books I identify with most strongly. There’s so much to say! While I have all the room in the world to write my thoughts down (it is my blog), I know I have to reel it in so I don’t scare people away with a review that’s almost as long as the book itself.
However…this post is gonna be a long’un. #sorrynotsorry
I usually don’t read nonfiction, apart from travel memoirs, but this “a year in the life” memoir from Glynnis MacNicol was a welcome deviation from my normal TBR pile. I first learned about No One Tells You This from a New York Times article, which revealed the author as single, childless 40 year-old woman writer in NYC.
I’m a 35 year-old would-be author, married but without children, and the ever-present question of having children had been bouncing around my brain more furiously than usual when I read that NYT article. Most of my friends already have children, or are at least sure they want them at some point, so I had been feeling a little lonely on my DINKY raft. I read the book description for No One and thought, Yes. Yes, Glynnis will understand.
MacNicol’s memoir chronicles the year of her life in which she turns forty. The book begins with her approaching her 40th birthday with uncertainty and trepidation, and it ends up in a pleasantly reassuring space, despite the trials and surprises she gracefully hurdles that year.
The author writes with raw, honest emotion that’s often laced with sarcasm, humor, and just a little bit of bitterness. However, she’s never bitter toward her own life; only toward how others often view a 40-year-old successful writer and independent woman…who also happens to be without a partner or children.
Her memoir is amazingly, almost disturbingly relatable in some parts. I’m married, but I got married at 31, which is considerably later than about half my peers. I still remember all too well the drudgery of dating: the depressing realizations that someone is not “the one,” and the undeniable albeit unwarranted sense of failure as another relationship, whether fledging or long term, went up in smoke. By the time I walked down the aisle, I had been single for so long (and, in many ways, without a partner even when I was dating someone) that it took me a year or two into my marriage to actually feel married.
MacNicol’s dating adventures conjured up feelings and memories buried not that deeply below the surface, and I could instantly relate to her accounts of and attempts at relationships. In one chapter, she visits Iceland and meets an attractive hiking guide who is quite taken with her. Even though she’s exhausted, she cancels her pre-booked spa day in order to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to spend additional time with him, even though that time is spent scaling a glacier in the freezing rain.
Reading this passage while snuggled up in bed with my husband by my side, my first thought was, Oh, Glynnis. What’s the point? And then, for a second, I blocked out the person sleeping next to me and remembered what it was like to be there — there, in the dating trenches, where a kind word or the graze of a hand on your hair is enough to make you feel like you’re not the failure the rest of the world sees when looking at a single woman of a certain age — and I got it. Yup. I would have gone glacier hiking on three hours of sleep, too.
Although MacNicol does talk about dating, No One Tells You This isn’t a Sex and the City-esque dating memoir, which I admit I was somewhat expecting. Instead, she moves into deeper, more personal territory, opening up about her desire — or, lack thereof — to have children; her mother becoming suddenly and rapidly ill; the ups and downs of her career; and her circle of friends that becomes family to her. All of these topics offer real, honest connections between reader and author, but the part about children and motherhood struck the deepest chord with me.
In a cluster of chapters, MacNicol visits her sister, who is estranged from her husband after the birth of their third child. Since her sis is out of commission after the birth, MacNicol takes on all the normal “mom duties” with her older niece and nephew — waking them up, getting them dressed, convincing them to eat breakfast; driving them to two separate schools and then after-school activities; cooking dinner, cleaning the house; and, in order to give the recovering mom a break, taking care of the newborn baby from time to time.
These chapters are hilarious. I empathize with how she handles just trying to keep the kids alive and in one piece for the end of the day. This is, of course, a difficult feat as a parent, but, trust me, it’s even more nerve-wracking when you’re not a parent and are doing it with someone else’s precious children.
In taking on the “mom” role, MacNicol finds herself in another kind of trenches, or “the deep end,” as she calls it — she experiences the mundane and exhausting parts of being a parent, not the rose-colored version that she (and I) feel so many women only see when they decide to have children. Parenting can be lovely, but it can be a downright mess, too. At one point, MacNicol acknowledges that perhaps she knows too much about the negative side of motherhood, which may color her viewpoint – another aspect to which I found myself relating. I constantly cite the negatives of childrearing when discussing it with my husband.
In my favorite scene in the book, MacNicol holds her sister’s newborn up to her face and forces herself to sweep aside all the negative things she knows about parenting, all the struggles both financially and emotionally it will include, to ask herself the question that all childless-by-choice women of a certain age ask themselves: “Do I want this?”
Then, she waits. She waits “for the panic, panic I’d seen overcome so many of my childless friends, to take me in its cruel grasp” and decide for her, for once and for all, that she wants to be a mother.
I damn near cried as I read this passage. I’ve asked myself this question every day for years, and I have yet to formulate a true answer. MacNicol writes about this feeling far more eloquently and directly than I can, but as I read these moments of her life, it was as if she’d plucked thoughts out of my brain and emotions out of my heart, and placed them in her book.
Could I do it? Yes. I can answer that question immediately, as can MacNicol. Of course we could do it. But, that’s not the Big Question. It’s “Do I want to do this?”
Some of us are still waiting for the answer. For some of us, it seems no one ever set our biological alarm clocks, so they’re not going off, even as the world around us explodes happily with new generations. Instead, we keep waiting for that change of heart, to come up with the more socially acceptable answer to the ever-present question of “When are you going to have children already?” We’re almost begging for that visceral need to run desperately down the road more traveled. Because, then, we’d have an answer. Not only for ourselves, but for the world that still doesn’t quite seem to acknowledge that the road less traveled could lead to a fulfilling life, too.
But, as MacNicol bittersweetly admits, sometimes the answer to “Do I want this?” never comes. That feeling that envelopes so many women just never appears for others. It’s unsettling, and reading about someone else grappling with the Motherhood Question was comforting, like finding the face of a friend in a room full of strangers. This is what this woman’s memoir does, among many other things – it offers you a friend.
There’s so much else in No One Tells You This that I haven’t even touched upon, most particularly the portions that deal with MacNicol’s mother’s declining health, and how MacNicol navigates her way through that emotional land mine. These sections again brought up all too familiar feelings, and I loved her all the more for bravely voicing her — and my — thoughts and fears. She also talks about the family you make through friends. The only child in me appreciated these parts since I have often found that the waters of friendship are thicker than blood.
Amidst all the highs and lows she faces in a year, MacNicol drives home the fact that she loves her life, despite what others may think of it. She loves her freedom and her sense of adventure; she loves where she’s been and where she is going, wherever that may be. She has lived her life on her own terms, and while she may not be fitting into the mold that society has cast for women of her age, she fits within her own life very well, and that’s more than so many people can say.
I finished No One Tells You This feeling extremely satisfied, even vindicated; to be completely understood by a total stranger is a rare gift. Confirmation of not being the only one with such thoughts about motherhood is wonderfully reassuring in and of itself, but to identify with so many other aspects of the author’s life and emotions was an unexpected delight. In a paraphrase of her own words, I’d like to say to MacNicol: “Thanks for existing, and then telling us about it.”
What are some books, either novels or memoirs, that made you feel completely understood? Share in the comments below!
And, stay tuned for my book-inspired recipe – Mushroom Brie Mac and Cheese for One!
