Melissa Rivers

Lies My Mother Told Me by Melissa Rivers is a disappointment on several levels but mostly just the lack of real humor and more just a shaking of the head response.

I'm of the age that my stronger opinions will be about Joan and not Melissa, Joan was everywhere on shows when I was growing up. I was never a fan but I usually enjoyed her humor and delivery. I think what I found most engaging was when she would be bantering with someone rather than her monologues, they were more hit or miss for me. This is all to say that I am coming to this without strong feelings either way about either Joan or Melissa.

I think what I found most off-putting was the frame of the "lies" Melissa attributes to Joan, as if Joan thought Melissa was truly stupid enough to believe these things. Yes, I know that is a conceit used for the book but even conceits can be faulty. Melissa even tries to exempt her book from criticism by throwing out partially correct literary definitions at the beginning.

I listened to the audiobook which is read by Melissa. That is both a positive and a negative in this case. While she often got her mother's voice in the writing she missed the mark in her reading. Some other narrator might have been given a little more slack by a listener. That said, this book is written in a personal manner such that it is hard to think about someone other than Melissa saying "me" and "I" so much.

I think I would have preferred this if she had simply said these were some of my mother's favorite "embellishments" and not make the frame imply Joan would actually misinform her daughter about almost everything, large or small. Between Melissa just not being all that funny and her inability to deliver the humor properly in the stories that were really her mother's, in either written or oral form, this just didn't work for me.

Having explained why I found little to personally like here, I should also mention that for many, especially those who might only know Joan's work from the last decades of her life, this may well be a delightful book. Even the stories/lies/jokes that I felt missed the mark have a humorous core, so for those who like Melissa'a delivery, or her imitation of Joan's delivery, this might be a laugh out loud book.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (mais)