Customer Reviews

Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Amen, Amen Amen is a brilliant, creative, genuine, and heart-wrenching account of Abby Sher's experience with life, love, and loss. Rarely do we as readers see so clearly how a child's mind works to make sense of the complex world around her. It is a must read for anyone who has struggled to understand the ways of the world - meaning it is a must read for just about everyone.

Amen, Amen, Amen, by Abby Sher is a memoir of a life with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and with anorexia-like eating disorders.

Raised in upstate New York by a passionate attorney father and stoic, selfless mother, their Jewish household was a blend of two adopted children and one biological child: Abby. The author had an exceptionally close relationship with both parents, and tragically lost her father to kidney cancer when she was just 12 years old. This loss, which happened just months after the death of a young, favorite aunt, likely sowed the seeds for what became the authors lifelong issues with OCD.

The first half of the book is largely devoted to helping the reader understand the authors rituals and prayers; we learn that Ms. Sher felt responsible for death and illness that struck not only her own family and friends, but for the whole world. By the time the author reaches college, she's spending hours a day praying and kissing things, and squirreling away things she finds on the street that she feels might hurt someone or cause them death, like paperclips and bits of glass.

The book is long and we follow the author from college and through her twenties, while she devotes her life to writing and acting in comedy sketches; to her female roommate Ruthie and to her love interests. Before you know it, the author has developed a full blown eating disorder, and is adept at cutting herself and banging her head.

There are parts in this book that made me wish I could shake the author and make her straighten up her life. I understand that OCD is a mental disorder, but I had a hard time identifying with the progression to cutting and the anorexia. I couldn't identify with her because she seemed disloyal to friends, childlike and immature. She worshiped her parents and made them into saints, but didn't seem to care about other people, or even herself. I'm pretty sure she suffered with a personality disorder, too.

I do have to give her props for being an excellent writer. The book was superbly written; I just don't feel much after reading it.

Sher's frank portrait of growing up with obsessive compulsive disorder is well-written and moving. OCD is often seen as a humorous disorder that causes people to be neat freaks or do quirky things like turn the lights on and off fifteen times so the oceans don't dry up. Amen, Amen, Amen rips the comedic veil off OCD and exposes it for what it is: a disorder that can ravage a person's life. It begins slowly, with repeating prayers a certain number of times daily, and ultimately leads to an eating disorder as well as other major life problems.

Amen, Amen, Amen is beautiful and heatbreaking, a painful snapshot of what it's like to experience loss and to be mentally ill, but it never bogs down into hopelessness.

Wow. Such skilled writing! What I found most compelling about this book is the subtle way Sher's voice grows up as the book progresses. She recaptures the confusion of her 10-year-old self trying to fit huge, adult issues into her kid worldview, then shifts just as easily into teen angst, and again into more self-aware adulthood.

And throughout it all, even though the various OCD rituals, bad relationships and anorexia crisis, she maintains a stellar sense of humor. AND she avoids painting anyone in her life as cruel or evil. AND it doesn't have a magical completely happy ending.

So this is no maudlin "My Struggle with [X]" memoir--it's a smart, thoughtful book about a woman who just happens to deal with some big psychological issues. And it made me look at my own little compulsive habits and how they affect my relationships.

I'm always interested in anything realted to OCD and I'm Jewish, like the author, so I was expecting to be really interested in this book. I hate to belittle someone's actual life experiences but this book just wasn't all that interesting. In some places I felt like it kind of dragged on and at other times, I felt like Sher skipped over some material that would have been really interesting...like her career at Second City or why exactly she married a guy that she seemed to really despise. For most of the book I just felt sorry for poor Abby but I never felt connected to her in any way. The writing seemed kind of distant and rushed in places. Also, I was turned off by the fact that ***SPOILER ALERT HERE*** she never gets past her OCD. I mean, I know OCD is a real problem and not something to be taken lightly but after writing an entire book about you'd think she'd make more progress.

Something like Abby Sher's Amen, Amen, Amen. As a young girl Sher starts collecting trash, repeating phrases and songs, ritually kissing her father's pictures until it wears away, and imagining horrific accidents of which she was the cause. In high school she's begins praying and it soon becomes hours daily. In college she starts to violently exercise and starve herself to the point of anorexia. Everything culminates in self mutilation. The story is interspersed with Sher's phrases, prayers and songs.

This memoir begins when the author, Abby Sher, is about 10. She recounts the first part of the story through the eyes of a child, so much so that it reads like juvenile literature. Specifically I was reminded of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day as the "the noodles were hard on the ends like dry rubber cement, and the salad was more brown then green, sloshing in a small pond of Italian Dressing." I do not know enough about OCD to comment on if this imaginative, Debbie-Downer type thinking is symptomatic of the disorder. If so, Sher is to be commended for such a vivid portrayal. But as a reader it is tedious to labor through because the narration never ages up, and the complaining goes on and on.

I picked up the book with the expectation to be captivated with the strange allure of an episode of Hoarders. Instead I found myself frustrated with the Sher's insane and immature rationales. Irritated by her severe delusions of importance. And repelled by her thoroughly detailed descriptions of cutting. I really struggled to finish this one. At its conclusion, I can concede that Sher had some serious problems and found her compulsions terrible, but I don't feel like I've come away with any better understanding of what caused her disorder, or that any of her compulsions were much resolved. The book only really finds traction as Sher details her life's relationships. One can't help sympathize with her mother, friends and boyfriends as Sher claims devotion and resentment in back to back sentences. They emerge as saints who patiently struggle with trying to accommodate Sher. These complex relationships comprise the redeeming pages in the otherwise indulgent and long-winded book.

I found Amen, Amen, Amen to be a leisurely read that offers some humor while examining some serious issues - primarily Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) releated.

Abby develops OCD as a ten year-old girl. Her aunt, and then shortly thereafter her father, dies and Abby's OCD manifests itself in her dealings with that loss in several ways such as kissing, collecting, counting and praying. Her story continues through high school, college and adulthood.

I found the honesty and full disclosure to be an intriguing read. OCD is a frustrating disorder that not many understand. Sher explains how her thoughts enabled the OCD.

Overall, I did find it interesting and enjoyable, though, not in a fun way because the issues are of a serious nature. However, her writing, humor and candor add much to telling her story in an engaging manner.

This book is very well written and does a good job of getting into the mind of someone with OCD. While it can, at times, get a big long-winded, no book is flawless. This is definitely worth a read.

Amen, Amen, Amen is a beautifully written, captivating memoir. It is so much more than

the story of a girl with OCD. It is about family, friendship, mothers and daughters,first love

and the universal struggles of growing up. Abby Sher is a genius at story-telling and the book

is filled with vivid scenes and humor. If you're looking for a book that will fill you up not

just pass the time, read Amen, Amen, Amen.

Abby Sher's book is intelligent, emotional, warm, quirky, unique and at the same time - so easy to relate to her. It's the voice of your best friend who was suffering like crazy - only you didn't know it. You will have so much empathy for her, feel so entertained by her story, and ultimately connect to the ways that we defeat ourselves in the potent swirl of romantic and familial love. Read it, share it with a reader you love.