I picked up this book because interviews with Gould have been making the rounds, and she has some really interesting things to say about what's expected from women's confessionals/memoirs, and how their male counterparts are not held to the same standards. She has some thought-provoking views and a unique way of expressing herself.
Sadly, there's little evidence of that in her actual book.
"And the Heart Says Whatever" is moody, aimless, and pretty self-indulgent. There are flashes of insight or humor, but these are so few and far between they feel like they belong to a different, better book. This one has almost nothing to offer besides a fragmented portrait of the author's late-teenage-to-late-twenties ennui.
Here's the thing about memoirs: usually the good ones are written by people who have led fascinating or unique lives. So far, Gould doesn't seem to be one of these people. She moves to NYC after freshman year of college, works a variety of rent-paying jobs, and recovers from the slow dissolution of a six-year relationship. There are sporadic attempts to inject her open-ended anecdotes with gravitas ("We were just college kids," or "I wonder why I didn't crack like an egg on the sidewalk."), but it came off as, well, pretentious. Gould also seems to luxuriate in the idea of herself as a screw-up; not necessarily a Bad Girl but one who realizes the trap of being a Good one. While I applaud the sentiment (and the homage to Liz Phair), her adventures read less like owning her mistakes and more like, you know, stuff. Stuff that happens to everybody, like getting involved with someone when you're not right for each other, or getting a puppy before you're ready for the (huge!) responsibility. None of it's that big a deal.
I suppose much of this could be excused if the prose were anything other than pedestrian. There's nothing particularly atmospheric or captivating about Gould's writing. She lives in one of the most fascinating cities in the world, but all we see of it here is the inside of office buildings and cheap apartments. She writes her "characters" as if for a short story workshop, making them memorable by dint of piled-on metaphors and elaborate physical descriptions, but is seemingly uninterested in them as people with personal motivations. This isn't just true for the bit players, who wander into the narrative to progress the story as needed before wandering off, but for the major influences in Gould's life as well. Her best friend for years disappears in an eyeblink, and her ex-boyfriend, despite permeating Gould's thoughts throughout, is almost a nonentity. We know they were once happy, she says she done him wrong, he's in a band and he has tattoos. Even for 200 pages, that's slim pickings.
"And the Heart Says Whatever" isn't an awful or offensive book. It isn't much of anything, really. Gould spends some time talking about her time at a publishing house and her exposure to "writers" who were bankable for their notoriety rather than talent or something to actually say. I wonder if she's aware that, for all intents and purposes, she's become one of these herself.
