I’m Glad My Mom Died
By Jennette McCurdy
The power a parent has over a child can be terrifying, especially when the parent is a manipulative narcissist who appears to have control over every other member of the family as well. From the first few chapters of I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy illustrates the terror of life under her mother. She doesn’t do so with the hatred or bitterness that I expected of someone who experienced that kind of a traumatic relationship. She puts the reader in the headspace of her younger self. Though we understand what we’re seeing, it’s clear that all she sees is a loving mother whose best friend is her darling child who will go on to live the dreams she saw unfulfilled and lose the weight she struggled to maintain her entire life. It’s horrifying. Like watching a film where you’re constantly yelling “Don’t go in the basement!”, only behind every creaky door is her mother with a new trauma.
Abuse begets abuse and the path to untangle oneself from the cycle is harder than simply going to therapy to talk about it for an hour every week. I imagine the writing of this memoir did more for processing her relationship than anything else she did over the course of the book. It’s unapologetic towards her mother while portraying her as empathetically as one possibly could. McCurdy walks the reader through every step of her childhood, in a hoarder house with an emotionally manipulative mother driving her to eating disorders she doesn’t have the language to understand. You see in stark detail, the unwanted acting career that she only left long after her mom finally died. The happy moments she describes are almost worse than the tragic ones because you can tell how fleeting they are. Outside of her mother, there’s manipulative men and industry higher-ups clearly taking advantage of a vulnerable girl, forced to parent her family through her childhood. There are friends offering support as best they can, but it’s hard to get out of the murky waters of her life until well after her career with them is over.
McCurdy reads I’m Glad My Mom Died herself, and part of what drew me to the audio format was hearing that she doesn’t do so perfectly. There are moments she stumbles over her own words, overcome by emotions for just a second, where you can tell the wound is still fresh. My fascination comes from her ability to get through the writing, which would have been hard for anyone to read. When it calls for joy, she reads like a precocious child actor, trying her best to land the role. She knows how to be funny, especially when she wrote her words that way. All the people in her life have unique voices, perhaps sounding exactly like they did in real life. When she reads as Miranda Cosgrove, I could hear the years of friendship and late night conversations they had together. It was a perfect imitation.
For a tell-all celebrity memoir, McCurdy writes more about the relationship she has with herself, exploring the depths of her life, letting the reader revel in the humanity of it all. There is plenty to say of Hollywood, mostly about Nickelodeon, but you should be prepared to read more about the life of a person trapped in a prison-like career crafted by the person who claimed to love her most. And the writing is good! It’s hard to talk about more than the hardest parts, but every chapter flows with the ease of a practiced storyteller. Whatever comes next, whether novel, memoir, or screenplay, it will be more than the moment this book lives in because it will come with all the talent she has spent her life perfecting.