“Some are born anxious, some achieve anxiety, and some have anxiety thrust upon them. I am lucky enough to have been blessed with all three,” (Donahue 7).
I heard Anne Donahue read from her collection of essays a few years back (the same literary festival where I heard Claudia Dey read from Heartbreaker, so I guess I’m getting through my festival reads backlog) and loved how frank and comfortable she was in her interviews. It made me interested in her debut collection of essays, Nobody Cares, and the beautiful cover didn’t hurt either.
I think Donahue is a very talented writer. You could feel her vulnerability and honesty in her writing and that’s probably what I liked the most, how willing she was to open herself up and let the ugly parts of her show, the flaws, insecurities, her grief, and love. It’s a scary thing to lay yourself bare like that, and it made the essays all that more powerful and personable.
That being said, the problem with essay collections and memoirs is that they have to be interesting enough to make the reader care about the author and the subjects being discussed, and for the most part I just didn’t care (I wonder if Donahue feared people would make this commentary considering the title of her book). There are a couple good essays, but honestly many of the essays come off as very millennial (which I can say as a millennial). To stereotype millennials (I’m sorry), Donahue has lived a fairly privileged life, which isn’t to disregard her own struggles but she was very lucky to have her parents to fall back on when she was in debt and friends who forgave her when she wasn’t as nice a friend to them. I didn’t care about her crush on Leonardo DiCaprio or her eclectic fashion sense, and some of the essays were so short it seemed like Donahue had added them last minute just to reach her word count.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed reading Nobody Cares. It was quick and Donahue is a talented writer, I enjoyed her voice. I just didn’t care about what she had to say.
(Also crying about at how bad inflation has gotten if Donahue was able to live in an apartment in Toronto for $800 a month in 2016, I believe, compared to today.)
Publication: September 18 2018
Publisher: ECW Press
Pages: 240 pages (Paperback)
Source: Owned
Genre: Non-Fiction, Essays, Memoir, Canadian
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤.5
Summary:
From the author of the popular newsletter That’s What She Said, Nobody Cares is a frank, funny personal essay collection about work, failure, feminism, and the messy business of being alive in your twenties and thirties.
As she shares her hard-won insights from screwing up, growing up, and trying to find her own path, Anne T. Donahue’s debut book offers all the honesty, laughs, and reassurance of a late-night phone call with your best friend. Whether she’s giving a signature pep talk, railing against summer, or describing her own mental health struggles, Anne reminds us that failure is normal, saying to no to things is liberating, and that we’re all a bunch of beautiful disasters — and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sarah O'Connor 