The Facebook book is worth the hype

And the author can't even promote it

Flatiron

After moonlighting as the Los Angeles Times Book Club newsletter writer, I’m back to my regular (?) hours here at Shut Up and Read. If you missed it, read my interview with “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” author Omar El Akkad here, and find my music festival reading lineup here.

A month of memoirs

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

“Careless People” came out on March 11, and the author—former Facebook exec Sarah Wynn-Williams—can’t talk about it. She was slapped with a gag order and banned from doing any press about the book. A book about Facebook is intriguing. A book about Facebook banned by Facebook is required reading. The memoir has now spent its third consecutive week on the New York Times Best Seller list and sold 60,000 copies in its first week (Obviously? What did Facebook’s legal and comms teams think was going to happen?) And it’s worth the hype. In her damning tell-all, Wynn-Williams goes on the record about everything from Sheryl Sandberg requesting to cuddle with junior staffers, to company execs collaborating with oppressive governments. She includes excerpts from company emails, text messages, and Slacks. Who cares about the company secrets? I bet Mark Zuckerberg is furious because of how he’s portrayed. Absolutely rizzless. A fearful leader, he’s even more insecure than we all thought. And Joel Kaplan, Meta’s current Chief Global Affairs Officer (and former Bush-era advisor) is giving jingoist who can’t read a map. Though at times it’s a bit repetitive (she hems and haws over quitting for what seems like years), Wynn-Williams’ whistleblower workplace memoir is a perspective we need, and proof of the company’s growing political power.

The Tell by Amy Griffin

tw: childhood sexual abuse

Amy Griffin goes there in her repressed memory memoir that has already become a buzzy bestseller. The book, which was recently selected as an Oprah Book Club pick, is being praised by celebrities like Drew Barrymore, Karlie Kloss, Jenna Bush Hager, Mariska Hargitay, and more. But behind the book’s millennial pink cover and glossy press is a painful and raw story about major childhood trauma. While undergoing psychedelic MDMA therapy, Griffin uncovers memories of being sexually abused as a child. What she recounts is graphic, but not gratuitous. Griffin—who walks the red carpet at the Met Gala, who has backed companies like Saie and Bobbie, who counts Reese Witherspoon among her close friends—pulls back on the curtain on her seemingly picture-perfect life and lays bare her story, ready for whatever comes next.

Firstborn by Lauren Christensen

tw: stillbirth

This is a brutal book. Lauren Christensen’s daughter Simone was stillborn at 22 weeks. In her memoir, Christensen honors the life and death of her first child, and meditates on how to navigate life after suffering such a devastating loss. Her storytelling is straightforward, her words are direct. But her grief is palpable, cutting through her spare style and imbuing her sentences with raw pain. In her second trimester, she learns that her daughter will not survive outside the womb. To terminate her pregnancy, she must travel out of state, the urgency adding to the anguish. The memoir is also a generational story; Christensen observes and unpacks her complex relationship with her own mother, and documents the decline of her beloved Gong Gong, who is plagued by Parkinson’s and memory loss by the end of his life.

No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce by Haley Mlotek

Haley Mlotek’s divorce memoir is not so much a memoir as it is a cultural commentary, sociological assessment, and history lesson, infused with the occasional memory or revelation about her marriage. Between essays on Nora Ephron and ‘Eat Pray Love,’ Mlotek reveals that she and her ex-husband met when they were 16, got married in their late twenties, and separated just one year later. But the bulk of their marriage story stays private; Mlotek keeps it to herself. I selfishly wanted more of Mlotek, but admire the fact that she chose not to mine her personal life for “content.”