This book is not:
A treatise on homosexuality.
A memoir explaining her recent life events: an ostensibly prominent figure in Christian author circles who left her husband and married a player on the US women’s national soccer team.
This book is:
A series of semi-connected orations, better suited for Facebook, about cultural hot topics that happen to concur with the author’s latest beliefs.
Meant to be heard rather than read.
I list these not as points against ‘Untamed’ but to inform future readers of what to expect and how to read it.
I was more than halfway through when I realized the book was not what I thought it would be. Then, pressing to the end so I could rightfully review the book, I had to accept that it was not what I wanted it to be: hopes I had based on the cover and the little I knew of the author, Glennon Doyle.
But it’d be unfair to assess ‘Untamed’ based on what I thought it was or wanted it to be. So, do I contend with Doyle’s thesis?
No, she and I have such a difference of opinion that to address all I disagree with would be wasted time. Our divergent trains of thought can be entirely explained by following them to their source: presuppositions about God, the purpose of life, and the role of marriage and family.
Furthermore, it’s futile to contend with the thesis. For if there’s any thread uniting these chapters it is made of two cords. Two principles Doyle establishes dismiss discussion.
“My goal is not to remain the same but to live in such a way that each day, year, moment, relationship, conversation, and crisis is the material I use to become a truer, more beautiful version of myself. The goal is to surrender, constantly, who I just was in order to become who this next moment calls me to be. I will not hold on to a single idea, opinion, identity, story, or relationship that keeps me from emerging new.”
"I am a grown-a** woman and I can do whatever the f*** I want.”
In so many words, she could recant the entire book tomorrow and you can’t fault her for that.
I pray she does and I would not accuse her of hypocrisy on that day.
For the rest of the review, I’d like to write as if I were one of the book’s editors recommending six changes. These are not gotcha entrapments; these are points of confusion, plot holes. To implement them would not rewrite ‘Untamed’ as I hoped it was, but as a “more beautiful version of” itself.
1. I appreciate your use of the Oxford comma. Perhaps it only stuck out because I’ve been reading lengthy books published decades ago where it wasn’t employed. However, you also employ various fonts and unexpected formatting that make sense on audio but will confuse readers of the print version.
Specifically, you list frequently. Sometimes you leave out all the commas and other times you removeallthespaces. Until I read those sections out loud to myself, I didn’t understand the effect your formatting had.
When you record your book, speak as it’s currently written, but I wonder if we could make those passages more readable for the hard copy.
2. It is highly dubious to the critic that your first night with Abby was as magical as you inferred, since they also read it was only your second time meeting each other in person and the first time you had ever kissed a woman. I’d like to see you elaborate on the thoughts and texts you two had in those early days. Establish the relationship for us. The consummating night comes across as too good to be true to those that are on the fence about the possibilities of “same-gender love.”
To that end, on honesty, revisit all the dialogue. Surely you rewrote the conversations for clarity, but was everyone always that clairvoyant or well-spoken in real life? Were you really that open and generous? People rarely are.
3. What do you think of the following quote (not from your book)?
We blame society, but we are society.
I ask because you do a great deal of blame-shifting. You often say you were raised to feel this or that and that there were certain expectations placed on you and you regretfully forwarded this to your children. Were these unstated or explicit? If you knew they were problematic, why did you not contest them sooner? Provide the readers insight on why you stayed in that white picket fence world for so long rather than lambasting ad nauseam why it’s unhealthy and wrong.
4. In two specific sentences, you include conciliatory clauses that distract from your main point.
“I have a son and two daughters, until they tell me otherwise.”
I see three possible interpretations of this.
I raise my children with an open hand and mind, knowing their choices are their own.
I eagerly anticipate the day my children join me in the LGTBQ community.
I want the reader to know I support the trans community.
Which is it, or is there a fourth?
“I know plenty of adults who find certain kinds of porn to be liberating, but the porn kids come across on the internet is misogynistic poison.”
Why should the porn kids find be different from that which adults find? If they are the same, why should the kids not find those certain types liberating or the adults find them poisonous?
5. I noticed three instances in which I’m concerned you’ll receive accusations of plagiarism. At the least, haters might lower their rating for lack of originality.
You relate the story of a woman lost in the wilderness who refuses to accept the rescue offerings of a park ranger and helicopter because she’s waiting for direct confirmation from God to save her. I’ve heard this illustration many times in sermons, but the characters and scenarios vary. Your version simply changes names to suit your point there. Might there be a more fitting analogy, something more original perhaps, to support your argument?
Your chapter that harangues cell phone use and social media consumption is yesterday’s news. My wife once shared with me wisdom from her literature professor: “When persuading, don’t write anything that everyone already agrees with.” Omit the scientific evidence and expert testimony about cell phones; keep the lessons you and your son learned when phone use became a problem in your home.
Toward the end, you go on a rabbit trail explaining that the Religious Right only started caring about abortion for political reasons, mere decades ago at that. This argument, in part, comes from a Politico article that garnered a lot of attention online. The first two plagiarism concerns I mentioned are essentially public domain, but I think your legal team would appreciate including citations on this moral majority bit, if you don’t scrap it entirely.
6. Thanks for sticking through to this point. I’ve always hated to read such qualitative recommendations of my manuscripts. I’d rather my editors send back misspellings and punctuation errors than entire swaths of chapters. With that in mind, if you find anything compelling in this last point, it might require a massive overhaul and even a retitle.
You have a lot more to say than your relationship with Abby. You also have the market and audience who will eat up your conclusions about these other topics. But the impetus for the whole story (and what will actually sell the book) is that you left your husband—cheater though he be—for Abby and not another man. I was lost on how and when your paradigm shifted on your view of marriage, God, Craig, the children, your parents, and ultimately yourself if any of it happened before you met Abby. What is it about your untamed life, the one you now live, doesn’t precipitate from your same-gender relationship?