"In 1899, Allie Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of the most profitable business deals in American history, and the generations that followed enjoyed immense privilege - but they were also haunted by suicides, cancer, alcoholism, and mysterious ailments."
That sounds like quite the family history, right? That's what I thought . . . but I just didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. I appreciated that the author's mother had done a lot of research and that the author delved into her family's history. However, there are a lot of parts that just felt like a lot of speculation to me. There's a lot of emotional detail in this book, where you're reading about what the author's grandmother thought, and her mother thought -- and I wondered where the author was getting all of that. I found it more distracting than interesting at times.
This story is deeply personal, but it focuses so much on the many complaints of a wealthy and destructive family that it feels self-absorbed. The way that the author's mother blames so much on the "Jell-O curse" becomes repetitive, especially because it feels like there's no resolution. The author brings up medical issues in the family, as well as a strange bout of occurrences among girls that may or may not have some kind of link to Jell-O --- but there's no resolution. From some of the reviews on Goodreads, and especially the one here, it appears there are some glaring errors in this book. It's one thing if you want to write a memoir about your mother and grandmother and include things about family history, but it's another to tie a business or company in to problems in that family.
The one thing I did like was the author's inclusion of the history of Jell-O, as well as the way that the advertising changed throughout the years (and how it reflected views on women). For me, that was the most interesting part of the book. I finished this book out of curiosity, but didn't enjoy it and wouldn't recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment