Jessica

Love the world, but what the heck?? This is half a story at best. Major characters introduced and then just... nothing? Lots of very very heavy hard to follow exposition leading nowhere.

So bad, I had to review the entire ebook to make sure I didn't just accidentally skip over a bunch of chapters somehow.

Very disappointed.

Last chapter is the weakest, but overall a delightful read.

Like pretty much all general non-fiction books, I just feel it could have been shorter. I wish non-fiction wasn't afraid of being 100 great pages rather than 300 mediocre ones.

It is also very, very much a product of its publication date. COVID and racial tension in the US form the framework for understanding the myth of closure, whereas I would argue that just a few years later, the wholesale destruction of the American experiment and climate grief would be better frameworks today.

All that said, this has a lot to say about grief and I think it is a valuable read for pretty much anyone. The sister book here is absolutely Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. They are almost two sides of the same coin.

This is what Stay True wanted to be.

Pleasure :: 1 Purpose :: 3 Plot :: 3 Prose :: 4 Personal :: 1

Avg → ⭐️⭐️ ½ rounding down

This won the Pulitzer in 2022 for autobiography/memoir. It was fine. It did some things well -- speaking to the Asian immigrant experience (though not as well as *How Far the Light Reaches*) and recalling the solipsism of college students.

But it steps all over itself with the relentless pretension-ness of that same self-centered college student. It feels like the author is still in that space. Perhaps he is.

I def would have def'd it had it been any longer... It was well-written though -- had very high hopes at the outset, for sure. I guess that Harvard PhD was worth it.