The Men In My Life by Patricia Bosworth -- (Book Review)

The Men In My Life
By Patricia Bosworth
Published by Harper, 2017
Print: $27.99
Ebook: $12.99

When you see the title "The Men In My Life", and the subtitle of this book, "A Memoir of Love and Art In 1950s Manhattan", you might think it's going to be some sordid tell-all about drugs, booze, sex, romantic love, and great art. It's not. Patricia makes it clear that the "men in her life" refers to her dad and her brother, Bart, both of whom died before their time by committing suicide. As for love, the author never really seems to find it in this book. She tells herself she's in love. She tells other people she's in love. But I don't think she ever really learned how to give or receive that emotion, at least within the panorama of this book. It took her around 70 years just to work up to the point of writing about the deaths of her father and brother. Her dad and mom gave her and her brother all the material advantages in life because in his prime, her dad made a lot of money being a lawyer. But her parents were always cool and distant and seemed to be more interested in being movers and shakers in the social world than raising their two children.

Patricia is so sheltered from her Catholic upbringing that she marries the first man she has sex with, a untalented artist named Jason whose only attempt at painting art is an unfinished boob of a woman. Jason also beats her pretty often because he knows deep down he sucks as an artist and will never be anyone.

For most of the book, Bosworth just seems to be drifting from one profession to another, sometimes she works as a model, sometimes as a stage or movie actress, sometimes on tv. She always finds a way to get by without ever finding true happiness. When she scores a lucrative advertising model gig, she has to bail out because she can't bring herself to SMILE. Yeah, she's THAT depressed. Here's all this money staring her in the face and she can't even bring a fake smile to her lips.

Another time, acting seems like it might be her career, but when she realizes that she's never going to be a "star" she begins to lose interest in that as well. In the last bit of the book, she realizes that writing is going to be her thing, but I don't know how successful she's been at that either. I'd never even heard of her before reading this memoir.

I enjoyed the book and never got bored but by the end I felt that Bosworth has led a pretty sad life. It's been filled with experience but not with joy. Because of certain betrayals and judgments by her parents, the author learned to conceal her feelings behind a wall of what appeared to be happiness. She never seemed to figure out the complicated relationship between sex and love. Even towards the end of the book, I didn't feel like she figured out what she wanted to do with her life. I think even at the age of 84 she STILL isn't content. I think she wanted adoration, to be given attention not matter what she did.

What I admired about her was that she survived abusive relationships, the suicides of her dad and brother, fighting against all the negative feminine stereotypes in place in the 1950s, and her failure as an star actress, and just kept on going. At some point I think she decided to accept the fact that she wasn't going to be some world famous personality and that she was going to live a pretty ordinary life once she got out of her 20s. Just like the rest of us.

My Grade: B+