Review of 'First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
This is the weirdest autobiography you’ve never read.
Sure it’s got some interesting tips - oh and boy did I relate with some of the descriptions in a few chapters. Weekend Anxiety? It me. But it’s far too self-centred a book to give us a true understanding of anxiety. Much of the things she claimed as anxiety sound, to those of us with full time jobs, mortgages and children, like simply LIFE.
And then it’s got such a shallow set of references - If David Brooks’ Road to Character and Louis CK are two of your dozen or so references, we’re not starting from a place of strength. Instead we have way too much belief for Middle class pseudo-hippy bullshit that you see half your Facebook friends share as FACTS from time to time. I mean at one point I wouldn’t have been surprised if she blamed CHEMTRAILS for her …
This is the weirdest autobiography you’ve never read.
Sure it’s got some interesting tips - oh and boy did I relate with some of the descriptions in a few chapters. Weekend Anxiety? It me. But it’s far too self-centred a book to give us a true understanding of anxiety. Much of the things she claimed as anxiety sound, to those of us with full time jobs, mortgages and children, like simply LIFE.
And then it’s got such a shallow set of references - If David Brooks’ Road to Character and Louis CK are two of your dozen or so references, we’re not starting from a place of strength. Instead we have way too much belief for Middle class pseudo-hippy bullshit that you see half your Facebook friends share as FACTS from time to time. I mean at one point I wouldn’t have been surprised if she blamed CHEMTRAILS for her problems.
And she seems to have been affected by EVERY AILMENT it’s possible to have. And while these illnesses must contribute to her overall sense of self, she doesn’t clearly articulate why each of them matter, so I still can’t decide whether the anxiety which she claims has owned her life has caused those ailments or vice versa.
In fairness she does open with a short foreword which disclaims any medicine in the book - so I’ll give her that.
Overall though, even as an exploration of one persons challenges, I found it mostly tedious and grating, so I mostly found it really difficult to
Empathise. Hence a number of my updates having a love/hate reference.
And of course it contained LOTS of references to quitting the evil sugar. Because, well, she’s gotta eat -right?
