Book Report: Untamed
Some of you enjoyed my book report on Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times — a book in which I detected neither difficult times nor rest, although it did take place in the winter. Since that one went pretty well, I figured I’d try again, this time with another self-help book whose author I only heard about this week.
That’s right, Untamed, by Glennon Doyle. Apparently I have been living in a hole not to have heard about her before. This is a woman who forged her literary identity as a Christian mom fighting to save her marriage, and in this book (spoiler alert) is now married to famous female soccer player Abby Wambach. So if you’re still reading the first book or two: it doesn’t work out with the husband, sorry.
In this book Ms. Doyle takes her concepts of inner Knowing and something called the Ache and a Touch Tree and other Important Capitalized Concepts and uses them to trace how she went from being a wealthy married woman with three kids and a husband to being a wealthy married woman with three kids and a wife. She compares herself to a cheetah and describes herself as a “thought leader” and also lets us know that she has a home on the Gulf of Mexico that has a porch. Even before her divorce, she led a life that she described as “fancy.” Cool. Got it. Are you inspired yet?
Is This Interesting?
Apparently this kind of narrative *is* interesting to a lot of people since Ms. Doyle is, technically, a best-selling New York Times author. And yet, I also sensed that there was a Whole Lot of Stuff that she just Skimmed Over, Forcefully Reframed, or Outright Omitted. For example:
The divorce was definitely her husband’s fault because he cheated, not because she preferred women.
Her family expresses relief that she is not in jail, leaving us to wonder what they had endured when she was an addict and a bulemic and before she became fancy. Maybe that’s discussed in a previous book, although I sort of doubt it.
At no time did she ever acknowledge the fact that one can only change one’s life with one’s own Knowing alone if one Already Has Money.
The Black Hole
Yes yes, number three. Oh my god, the great sucking void in the middle of this book— the great unmentionable — the thing we’re apparently not supposed to notice, is MONEY.
For example. Check out the back of the dust jacket, where, predictably, there’s a blurb by another white female “thought leader” with an enormous travel budget: Elizabeth Gilbert:
“Untamed will liberate women — emotionally, spiritually, and physically.”
Notice she didn’t say “financially,” because it definitely won’t liberate you financially, nor will it even bring up money at all.
Look, as I mentioned in my previous book report, I get that people with money can also be good writers. I would also argue that people with money may be *more likely* to become good writers since they don’t have to spend eight hours a day exhausting their brains working for someone else so they can eat and bring home health insurance if they’re lucky. That’s eight hours a day into infinity freed to pursue one’s craft, and damn — if I can mention another phrase she uses a handful of times in this book, “must be nice.”
Yes she started a philanthropy which has raised over 20 million for women and familes in crisis, and that’s great and all, but as far as I’m concerned, that has nothing to do with the airbrushed life narrative that is her actual product in this world. I would argue this narrative is just as damaging for women to mass-consume as the unrealistic beauty standards displayed in beauty magazines that she holds responsible in part for her bulemia.
In other words, there’s a lot in here I would call Bullshit.
But Some Good Moments
There are a few things in here that I thought were interesting, including her thoughts on leaving the church, and how that’s not necessarily leaving God, but preserving the God in you by leaving an institution that is getting it wrong. Okay fine. And there are a lot of other internal thoughts smeared in here too, which some might find helpful, if reminicent of reading the most self-indulgent parts of your eighth grade diary.
My favorite part of the book is when an older woman named Joanne wearing a sweatshirt with an American flag printed on it, and then the word “Gramma” scrawled in puff paint over that, stood up at one of her events and asked, “… Why is everyone so gay all of a sudden?”
The audience, awkwardly, didn’t laugh at that, but they did laugh at part of her response: “It’s those damn GMOs, Joanne.”
Could there please, please be more of this, and less of the Knowing and the Being and the Trees and the Not Talking About How Rich You Are And How This Book Lands With A Thud In A Pandemic Where Everyone Is Struggling And People Are Literally Freezing In Texas? Please?
In Conclusion
So there you go. We have another wealthy white female thought leader who won’t necessarily be able to provide you with health insurance, but she *may* be able to give you some pointers on how to steer your life in a more authentic direction once everything is mysteriously paid for and you are fancy.