Review: Depressing and Darkly Humorous
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 20, 2013
This is a depressing, yet, darkly humorous, story of what happened to the author beginning in 2008 when she worked at WaMu. It was probably a good place for Ms. Wolf to work, as she seemed to practice a lot of the same hand-over-my-eyes, I-will-deal-with-it-later types of methodologies as her doomed company. It was funny, and well-written and error-free, but as far as content goes, I couldn't help think at least some of this stuff must be exaggerated. At least I would hope so. She has an adopted daughter with mental problems, who she reluctantly takes into her home because her equally dysfunctional husband, whom she married three days after meeting in person (I guess their online relationship must have been such that three days is all she needed), wants it. She has homes and horses and credit card debts up the WaMu (pun intended, if it is a pun.) She loses everything, then gets breast cancer.It is a really frank and funny read, but I couldn't identify with any of the choices Ms. Wolf made. I guess that isn't the point. I do think she is a great writer, and her humor is extremely sophisticated, so I'm four-starring it for that.But really. I just couldn't identify with most of it, except the cancer, of course. That can happen to anyone. I should know. And a job loss can happen to anyone. But to be so ill-prepared and then expect an affluent sibling to bail you out? Really? And to keep on making poor financial choices, like keeping horses when you can't afford to? The author makes a case for that, that she needed to keep them for her sanity. But I don't understand that way of thinking, which is why I didn't appreciate the book as much as I'd hoped to.