Hi. Today I’m reviewing Ambition Monster by Jennifer Romolini. I love that name, Romolini. That’s nice. I really like this book. It’s really interesting because there were so many places, so many things about her upbringing that reminded me of mine in certain respects, but very different, but similar in the sense of feeling like nobody was really minding the store, as far as my upbringing was concerned, it seemed like.

But I won’t dwell on that, but I will say reading this sort of made me think about, more about writing my own memoirs because of the things she said and talked about in here, and what I thought was striking was how different her response was to the situations that she faced. And I realized that it was a difference in her expectations in terms of what she wanted. She wanted all this, I don’t know, glory in publishing or something, and I was totally different.

 

I mean, my response to overtly sexist behavior was to shut it down. I can think of only one instance where that’s not true. It was during an interview, somebody made a remark that I could have called him out on in terms of making a cliche assumption about my husband who was a firefighter, and I just didn’t.

But it’s interesting. I would not put up with some of the stuff that she would put up with for sure, and I was just impressed by the fact that she was a mother trying to do all the things she was doing. But yeah, there comes a point where you say, I can only do so much, and the point where you finally just say, why can’t I just be happy? Why don’t I focus on that? What is it that will make me happy? Those things, this book will help you think about your assumptions.

I don’t know what your assumptions are about womanhood, but mine were different, I think, than many people’s or many people my age, I suppose, or older, because honestly, I’m not really a Baby Boomer when you come down to it. I don’t have some of the expectations about motherhood and being a woman that I hear in older women, older than myself.

So I don’t know. I don’t know. I feel like I’ve fallen in between, in some sort of gap between those generations—between X and Boomer. The Lost Generation? They came and went, right? They got lost. I don’t know. Anyway, having said that, I enjoyed this memoir and it did kind of inspire me to think about writing my own. So thank you, Jennifer Romolini. Nice work. Take care, and I’ll be seeing you.

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