Mehrsa's Reviews > Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason

Trust me, I wanted to like her. I wanted to feel her vulnerability but the writing was so over-the-top and "writerly" that I felt a little manipulated as a reader. She conveys a message of out-of-controlness but then when you step back, it feels like the emotions were hers and not at all mine. She's right to recognize that it was a shitty thing to do--to lie to everyone and especially her affair partner's wife who is dying from cancer. She tries to castigate herself on the page which falls flat, but then you get the sense that she really understand the pain she may have caused to the wife or her husband. Like she wants to, but the way she describes the wife is sort of the "cold, hard, bitch" trope or "pathetic and dying" model. Neither seems very real. Her kids are also not real--nor in fact, is her lover. It's just a lot of self-talk and self-criticism about desire. I think the topic is fascinating and I could and would read all the books about this, but this one just fell flat for me.