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A review by brooke_review
You Cannot Mess This Up: A True Story That Never Happened by Amy Weinland Daughters
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.0
When asked that age-old question, “If time travel existed, would you rather travel to the past or future,” I always pick the past. I have a great nostalgia for times gone by and am curious for the way things were. Amy Weinland Daughters takes time travel one step further in her memoir-novel hybrid, You Cannot Mess This Up. In this novel, a 46-year-old Amy travels back to 1978 and spends Thanksgiving with her 10-year-old self (posing as a long-lost cousin.)
With such an intriguing premise, You Cannot Mess This Up is set-up for greatness just on storytelling opportunity alone. What would it be like to meet the child you were? As a former teacher, I often wonder about what I was like as a child, only being able to catch glimpses of my former self from grainy home movies. If we could meet ourselves, would we like ourselves? Would we be able to see our future selves waiting within?
You Cannot Mess This Up is filled with hilarity and awkwardness, while at the same time being incredibly poignant and nostalgic. I connected with Daughters on many passages as she expressed the exact same things I have been feeling and pondering as a now 40-year-old woman evaluating my life. And although I was not yet born in 1978, I greatly enjoyed seeing the year brought back to life in You Cannot Mess This Up, as my own mother graduated from high school in 1978, so I have often heard her talk about it.
On the other hand, You Cannot Mess This Up reads as somewhat of a catharsis for Daughters. As I read this novel, I imagined Daughters wrote this book as a way of working through her feelings and questions about her family and life. I say this because Daughters overflows this novel with personal details, many of which are not particularly important or relevant to the reader, but that would be of great interest to Daughters’ own family. This book would do well to be largely edited down to move at a faster clip and reworked to appeal to broader audience. While many of the details and musings Daughters includes would work well for an actual memoir, they muddle the story in novel form.
Recommended to anyone who has ever been curious about their past or who has a fascination with the late 70s!
With such an intriguing premise, You Cannot Mess This Up is set-up for greatness just on storytelling opportunity alone. What would it be like to meet the child you were? As a former teacher, I often wonder about what I was like as a child, only being able to catch glimpses of my former self from grainy home movies. If we could meet ourselves, would we like ourselves? Would we be able to see our future selves waiting within?
You Cannot Mess This Up is filled with hilarity and awkwardness, while at the same time being incredibly poignant and nostalgic. I connected with Daughters on many passages as she expressed the exact same things I have been feeling and pondering as a now 40-year-old woman evaluating my life. And although I was not yet born in 1978, I greatly enjoyed seeing the year brought back to life in You Cannot Mess This Up, as my own mother graduated from high school in 1978, so I have often heard her talk about it.
On the other hand, You Cannot Mess This Up reads as somewhat of a catharsis for Daughters. As I read this novel, I imagined Daughters wrote this book as a way of working through her feelings and questions about her family and life. I say this because Daughters overflows this novel with personal details, many of which are not particularly important or relevant to the reader, but that would be of great interest to Daughters’ own family. This book would do well to be largely edited down to move at a faster clip and reworked to appeal to broader audience. While many of the details and musings Daughters includes would work well for an actual memoir, they muddle the story in novel form.
Recommended to anyone who has ever been curious about their past or who has a fascination with the late 70s!