Review: This Messy Magnificent Life: A Field Guide

This Messy Magnificent Life: A Field Guide by Geneen Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am supposed to love Geneen Roth. I just wonder if I started with the wrong book. She is well-known for her seven rules of eating that helped her find a healthy relationship with food; they include things like, "Eat when you are hungry," and "Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car." And Anne Lamott wrote the preface to this, so that was a must-by endorsement on its own.

But somehow I didn't click with much in this book. Like Lamott, Roth is honest, and funny, and broken, and optimistic, and a realist. But I found some of the chapters of the book just too short - I wanted more meat, I wanted to know more - and other chapters of the book lacking in a relatable point. The two things I related to most in the book were quotations from other people (Shunryu Suzuki: "All of you are perfect just as you are and you could use a little improvement," and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: "The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.”) With so many references to her earlier books - about food, about losing all her money to Madoff, about her husband - I can't help but wonder if she wrote this one on a contract, not because she had something to say.

All that aside, I'd read something else by her - but only because Lamott (and, ok, Oprah) tells me to.

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