Jennette McCurdy’s ‘I’m glad my mom died’ left me in tears

 

Spoilers ahead!

Jennette McCurdy’s book I’m glad my mom died gives an emotional account of McCurdy’s upbringing which recalls key moments throughout her acting career and personal life. I listened to the audiobook, read by her, which I felt gave an authentic view of her story. The book circulates around her mother and how McCurdy’s life revolved around her. However, the stories we learn about her mother and her reveal physical and emotional abuse that McCurdy only recognises as abuse after her mother dies.

 

I was thoroughly excited to hear this audiobook as I watched McCurdy in iCarly and Sam and Cat growing up. To many of us, she was a huge part of our childhoods, but she didn’t have the best childhood herself. She talks about some parts of her life in so much detail that you feel as though you’re in her shoes. There have been mostly positive reviews of the book such as one from Publishers Weekly calling the book "Insightful and incisive, heart-breaking and raw." Listening to the audiobook version also brings the emotion across very harshly.

 

She’s very honest about some of the topics she mentions, such as when she talks about working with Ariana Grande. She describes being jealous of Ariana, but she doesn’t say anything vicious about her. It’s brilliant in the way that you feel McCurdy’s emotion but don’t hate her for feeling the way she describes. She also uses humour here and throughout the book which gives us a break from the seriousness of the topics. “Fuck being a good sport, I’d rather be playing charades with Tom Hanks.” McCurdy says when she finds out Ariana had been playing charades at Tom Hank’s house.

 

McCurdy is very clever in the way that she recalls her stories. As a reader, we can tell her mother is abusing her, but she tells the story in a way of how she felt at the time, not realising it was abuse. She downplays situations that happened in her life such as in relationships and family, but we can tell things are bad. A striking example of this is that McCurdy gives a painful account of how her mother taught her to calorie count at a young age. She believed her mother was helping her, but in the long run she became bulimic and anorexic. At the time, she thought calorie counting would help her stay thin and look younger which would help her get more acting roles. She constantly compliments how much she appreciates her mothers’ ‘help’, but quickly she mentally goes to a bad place.

 

This is just an example of how people can have an influence over others and sometimes you can be so oblivious of how you’re being treated by people you care about. Although not everyone can relate to the abuse referred to, everyone can relate to times they were mistreated - we’ve all had them. One of the key messages in McCurdy’s book is to put yourself first, and there’s something everyone can learn from her story.

 

The way she describes her mother from the start to the end of the book proposes a huge change, and we follow her on her journey to learning how to care for herself. The title of the book itself I’m glad my mom died is  eye catching, bound to get anyone’s attention. The comparison of how she positively describes her mum throughout the book compared to the title shows that there will be an interesting twist to her story.

 

…and there is a strong ending to the story. Slowly, we see her go through several realisations of the damage her mother has caused in her life. “I had her up on a pedestal, and I know how detrimental that pedestal was to my well-being and life.” This is just one of the things she says, and it stands out because in one sentence alone she sums up the difference in how she feels.

 

McCurdy decides to never visit her mother’s grave again which I think is the rawest ending I’ve ever seen in a book. It shows her character development and power to take her life back. After she leaves the grave, it’s quite literally the end of the book. She doesn’t need to say anything further about her mother, her actions speak loud and clear. It’s constructed so carefully, and as the audiobook finished, I felt overwhelmed with emotion.

 

I highly recommend this book, especially the audiobook. It gives an amazing account of her life with so many ups and downs that take you on an emotional rollercoaster. If you watched McCurdy growing up, it’s interesting to see what went on that we didn’t see. Everyone’s going through something and sometimes you don’t quite know the person you’re watching on the screen.