Mrs. Keaton is a lesbian? An “out & proud”, cruise-boat vacationing, paid speaking engagement lesbian? But, she was married to David Birney (and two other guys). She has five children. She’s 60 years old. I’m stunned.
I don’t normally read memoirs/autobiographies. Most memoirs; in my opinon are fodder for those enquiring minds that need to have trash to talk about. There are some people I’m interested in reading about but usually they are biographies about people that were historical individuals; however, there have been several memoirs that I’ve put on my list in the past month; this is the first of the ones I’ve read.
I have to admit I almost put the book down and took it back to the library after the first page. As it’s no secret (you don’t have to wait until the end of the book to figure it out), Meredith tells us point blank that she’s a lesbian in, like the 2nd paragraph of the book. Well, she infers she has a partner of four years and then starts talking about coming out and a lesbian cruise. Let’s just say I did the math.
But, I thought, there has to be more to the book than that, otherwise why would she put it in the first chapter? Fortunately (for me), she doesn’t really discuss her conversion to lesbianism again until the last few chapters of the book.
What I liked about the book:
I’m impressed that through the entire book she doesn’t place the blame elsewhere for her decisions, choices, relationships or addictions. She talks about her fault in the end of the marriages, the relationships to begin with, her mother’s lack of nurture and family ideals (which she tried not to model in her family), her poor choices in men, her feelings about her father, stepfather and other men in her life and her decisions to change how she goes through life with therapy and 12-step programs.
What I Didn’t like about the book:
I think it’s amazing that she doesn’t lay any blame for the failed relationships on the other half of the relationship pair. She doesn’t blame her step-father, Jack, for his tendencies to come-on to her; she doesn’t blame her mother for her lack of mothering skills, and she ‘excuses’ David Birney’s behavior in their relationship as ‘the only way he knew’. Maybe it’s the way he was raised, but he, like all of us have the options, the self-help section at the library and bookstores, therapists and other avenues for changing ourselves. I think she lets them off easy.
I find it interesting that she suddenly finds women she’s attracted to physically and spiritually only after three ended marriages, alcoholism and a 12-step program. Without wanting to sound hateful and uncaring, I think she diminishes the learning and understanding she gained about her former relationships by changing the playing field, so to speak. I also am a bit irritated by the stock photo of her with a cross on and her use interchangeably between swear words and praying about events in her life.
It was a good book; I enjoyed her openness without blaming, her self-decision on keeping her children’s stories out of the mix (she does talk about them, but only in the smallest of ways and never in a way that I would consider hurtful).
I still just can’t quite reconcile myself to Mrs. Keaton being a lesbian. It would be like saying that Mrs. Brady is a transvestite.
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