There is nowhere else to start when discussing Jenette McCurdy’s new memoir than its title. Let us not mince words: naming your memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died is a truly dazzling choice, and one which sparkles in a crowded field. These five words – five syllables – flatly underlined in a chintzy, hot pink typeface, turn its cover into a 1970s recipe card, complete with desaturated photo of the author cheerily clutching a confetti-filled urn.
I’ve encountered album sleeves by Norwegian Black Metal bands which have prompted less of an involuntary flinch, and I mean that as the highest compliment
I’ve been sent pictures of this book for weeks now, as waggish staff have regularly placed it next to my own memoir of maternal bereavement in US bookstores. Its effect has not waned. I’ve encountered album sleeves by Norwegian Black Metal bands which have prompted less of an involuntary flinch, and I mean that as the highest compliment. There’s more humour, pathos, and anger on the cover of I’m Glad My Mom Died than most books manage on their insides. Luckily, however, for people who like reviews a little longer than the above, I’m Glad My Mom Died remains just as funny, sad, and angry, once opened.
Jennette McCurdy found childhood fame as one of the stars of mega-hit Nickelodeon sitcom iCarly, feted by millions of adoring young fans over its years-long run. During that time, she was relentlessly criticised and controlled by Deb, her wheedling and manipulative mother, and subjected to a litany of micro and macro emotional abuses. I’m Glad My Mom Died charts a course through these experiences and the profoundly destabilising effects they had, and continue to have, on her life. Make no mistake, many aspects of this book are harrowing, and all the more powerful for being rendered in a present tense that places you firmly in her child’s eye view for much of the book’s length.
Her short, crisp chapters have a zinging economy of language, whether in the painfully astute self-observation of her narration, or her dialogue, which has the zip and swing of sitcom writing at its most polished
The grateful innocence of this perspective makes for moments of searing poignancy, as McCurdy accepts her mother’s critiques of her appearance, her promotion of disordered eating, and even her insistence on showering her by hand well into her teens, with an unceasing spirit of denial, acceptance, and even gratitude.
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The book is made both more and less bearable by the neatly understated humour of McCurdy’s writing. Her short, crisp chapters have a zinging economy of language, whether in the painfully astute self-observation of her narration, or her dialogue, which has the zip and swing of sitcom writing at its most polished. Since she worked her entire childhood on sitcoms, this makes sense, and sets up a jarringly rewarding tension between events and their descriptions. At one point, I noted the dagger-sharp arguments between McCurdy’s parents were so darkly comic and brilliantly paced, they could be cut straight from an episode of Malcolm In The Middle, only to turn the page and read her account of booking an audition for that very show.
It’s obvious from the start that Deb’s behaviour is pathological and there are enough early signposts that her situation is nothing to laugh about – we have, after all, seen the front cover of the book – even before the exact degree of her mother’s numerous betrayals and cruelties comes into greater focus.
But witnessing a gormless matriarch insisting on supervising her daughter’s dance classes, or haranguing agents and directors for casting other actresses, one can’t help being struck by her place within a long-familiar TV comedy archetype. We have watched hundreds of overbearing stage moms on screen, and our first glimpses of Deborah McCurdy – especially in a book as funny as this – conform to many of these cliches.
While the lion’s share of opprobrium must fall on her mother, we are given a searingly clear-eyed view of an entire industry which sustains itself on an endless conveyor belt of vulnerable young performers
In sitcoms, the pushy stage mom, the bickering couple, the overbearing mother, all own up to their sins and are forgiven by episode’s end. Lessons are learned, the guilty apologise, and tears dry to the applause of a live studio audience. McCurdy has no such luck, and while the lion’s share of opprobrium must fall on her mother, we are given a searingly clear-eyed view of an entire industry which sustains itself on an endless conveyor belt of vulnerable young performers. And one within which such pressure cooker parenting, institutional abuses, and systemic invasion of privacy, are not merely condoned but incentivised. It is hard, after all, to look at a four or five-year-old “star” and imagine a credible scenario in which they want to be an actor as much as their parents want them to be one.
It is likely that some will encounter I’m Glad My Mom Died’s excellent title and surmise that it is either gleeful or crude. It is neither. It is a startlingly impressive, assured and funny memoir. For that, if nothing else, its writer has every right to be glad.
