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Love Me Back
From "5 Under 35" honoree and Rona Jaffe Award-winner comes an urgent, intensely visceral debut novel about a young waitress whose downward spiral is narrated in electric prose
Marie, a young single mother, lands a job at an upscale Dallas steakhouse. She is preternaturally attuned to the appetites of her patrons, but quickly learns to hide her private struggle behind an easy smile and a crisp white apron. In a world of long hours and late nights, where everything runs on a currency of favors, cash and cachet, Marie gives in to brutally self-destructive impulses. She loses herself in a tangle of bodies and the kind of coke that 'napalms your emotional synapses.' But obliteration—not pleasure—is her goal. Pulsing with fierce, almost feral energy, Love Me Back is an unapologetic portrait of a woman cutting a precarious path through early adulthood.
Marie, a young single mother, lands a job at an upscale Dallas steakhouse. She is preternaturally attuned to the appetites of her patrons, but quickly learns to hide her private struggle behind an easy smile and a crisp white apron. In a world of long hours and late nights, where everything runs on a currency of favors, cash and cachet, Marie gives in to brutally self-destructive impulses. She loses herself in a tangle of bodies and the kind of coke that 'napalms your emotional synapses.' But obliteration—not pleasure—is her goal. Pulsing with fierce, almost feral energy, Love Me Back is an unapologetic portrait of a woman cutting a precarious path through early adulthood.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published September 16, 2014
150 people are currently reading
6793 people want to read
About the author
Merritt Tierce
3 books106 followersMerritt Tierce was born and raised in Texas. She worked in various secretarial and retail positions until 2009, when she moved to Iowa City to attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as the Meta Rosenberg Fellow.
After graduating in 2011 with her MFA from Iowa, she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, and she is a 2013 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Author.
Merritt is currently the Executive Director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, a Dallas-based nonprofit abortion fund. She has volunteered and worked for the TEA Fund since 2004, and co-wrote the abortion play One in 3 with Gretchen Dyer and Victoria Loe Hicks. One in 3 played to sold-out houses for most of its three-week run and stimulated a local conversation about the reality of abortion in women’s lives.
Merritt’s first published story, "Suck It," was selected by ZZ Packer to be anthologized in the 2008 edition of New Stories from the South, and her first book, Love Me Back, is forthcoming from Doubleday. Merritt lives near Dallas with her husband and children.
After graduating in 2011 with her MFA from Iowa, she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, and she is a 2013 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Author.
Merritt is currently the Executive Director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, a Dallas-based nonprofit abortion fund. She has volunteered and worked for the TEA Fund since 2004, and co-wrote the abortion play One in 3 with Gretchen Dyer and Victoria Loe Hicks. One in 3 played to sold-out houses for most of its three-week run and stimulated a local conversation about the reality of abortion in women’s lives.
Merritt’s first published story, "Suck It," was selected by ZZ Packer to be anthologized in the 2008 edition of New Stories from the South, and her first book, Love Me Back, is forthcoming from Doubleday. Merritt lives near Dallas with her husband and children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 575 reviews
September 26, 2014
What to make of Love Me Back? It's a novel that asks not necessarily to be liked but to be reckoned with. It has some scorchingly good writing for a debut. While Marie, a Dallas waitress, feels less like a fully formed character and more of a vessel for all of the service industry's drugs and sex and racism and awful men to be dumped into, she's still deftly drawn. She almost tragically embraces the role she's fallen into; she's a sharp and brilliant observer of those around her but also someone who courts pain; promiscuity is an easy and reliable course of existence, her fellow restaurant workers a kind of perverted family. She can't be a proper, present mother to her young daughter, even though Marie's love for her is tenderly portrayed; she can't appreciate the seeming goodness of her ex-husband, who impregnated her on a church mission in high school. When she's working, it's a performance, and she often self-destructively chooses not to end that performance once she leaves the restaurant. To think of the number of men she sleeps with is like imagining the progress of the national debt clock.
In the acknowledgments, Tierce--a former waitress, Iowa MFA grad and already a celebrated writer--thanks a fellow author for convincing her that her "restaurant stories" were a larger book. But this isn't really a novel; the shock of the writing and Marie's behavior is unsettling enough, but that the format of that "larger book" never quite congeals into a sustained narrative helped unnerve me even more. It's a brutally perfect way of conveying Marie's dissociative existence, throughout which she keeps her "dignity separate, somewhere else, attached to different things.”
Read this book, suspend your disbelief for 200 pages, and go hug somebody you love afterward.
In the acknowledgments, Tierce--a former waitress, Iowa MFA grad and already a celebrated writer--thanks a fellow author for convincing her that her "restaurant stories" were a larger book. But this isn't really a novel; the shock of the writing and Marie's behavior is unsettling enough, but that the format of that "larger book" never quite congeals into a sustained narrative helped unnerve me even more. It's a brutally perfect way of conveying Marie's dissociative existence, throughout which she keeps her "dignity separate, somewhere else, attached to different things.”
Read this book, suspend your disbelief for 200 pages, and go hug somebody you love afterward.
January 7, 2015
MFA erotica.
August 18, 2014
www.shelfnotes.com review
Dear Reader,
Boy, this was gritty. It made me blush, which is pretty hard to do. I love Palahniuk, so this should have been a cake-walk. In truth, it was but I could see SO many readers turn away from this book due to the language and sleazy situations. As dirty as this book is, the truth is... so is real life (especially in the foodservice industry). This novel should be read as a warning as to what life can give you and how you should avoid the crap (a don't end up like this! cautionary tale). We all know someone like Marie, the slutty waitress that has no inhibition and lets people walk all over her. Some will look at her with disgust, others with pity but after reading this book... just MAYBE, the looks will change to understanding. Some people get shit on and others let it happen. This is life. This is the essence of this book. Truth, dirty and real and nothing you can do will stop it from happening. There are times I want to scream at the book and take a chunk out of it with my teeth.
Have any of you worked in the food industry? I did briefly, and from my experience this book is pretty dead on. Each little detail of what a day is like during the hustle and bustle of a mealtime is perfectly, horribly accurate. Hard work, end of story. I almost think that the way the job is might have something to do with the drugs, drinking and debauchery that happen, to get away from reality. Nobody wants to live like that forever, right? Theres parts of this book that make me feel grimey, like if I took my finger and rubbed it on the page, it would come back black with grime. I liked this book but do I think this is everyones cup of tea? No way. Do I think it's important to have a book that shows the perspective of a messed up girl working her butt off? Yes. People like this exist and I'll even admit that I've had my moments throughout the years that I can be ashamed of... but should we shy away from the reality of it? No. If you aren't afraid to get your hands dirty (well, maybe more your mind), read this book, I can promise you you'll learn something.
Happy Reading,
AmberBug
Dear Reader,
Boy, this was gritty. It made me blush, which is pretty hard to do. I love Palahniuk, so this should have been a cake-walk. In truth, it was but I could see SO many readers turn away from this book due to the language and sleazy situations. As dirty as this book is, the truth is... so is real life (especially in the foodservice industry). This novel should be read as a warning as to what life can give you and how you should avoid the crap (a don't end up like this! cautionary tale). We all know someone like Marie, the slutty waitress that has no inhibition and lets people walk all over her. Some will look at her with disgust, others with pity but after reading this book... just MAYBE, the looks will change to understanding. Some people get shit on and others let it happen. This is life. This is the essence of this book. Truth, dirty and real and nothing you can do will stop it from happening. There are times I want to scream at the book and take a chunk out of it with my teeth.
Have any of you worked in the food industry? I did briefly, and from my experience this book is pretty dead on. Each little detail of what a day is like during the hustle and bustle of a mealtime is perfectly, horribly accurate. Hard work, end of story. I almost think that the way the job is might have something to do with the drugs, drinking and debauchery that happen, to get away from reality. Nobody wants to live like that forever, right? Theres parts of this book that make me feel grimey, like if I took my finger and rubbed it on the page, it would come back black with grime. I liked this book but do I think this is everyones cup of tea? No way. Do I think it's important to have a book that shows the perspective of a messed up girl working her butt off? Yes. People like this exist and I'll even admit that I've had my moments throughout the years that I can be ashamed of... but should we shy away from the reality of it? No. If you aren't afraid to get your hands dirty (well, maybe more your mind), read this book, I can promise you you'll learn something.
Happy Reading,
AmberBug
March 4, 2015
I don’t like books like this anymore, books where your protagonist should know better but doesn’t and so she goes around and around making the same shitty decisions and banging 30 coworkers or restaurant patrons in a very short period of time. Merritt Tierce is that kind of writer, the strong and capable kind whose sentences have been whittled down to all of the important, gut-kicking words. Unfortunately, other times she’s so entwined with her story that paragraphs with the minutia of restaurant-life, the inside baseball stuff, gets stacked for pages and pages. The rest of the time, she’s telling essentially the same story over and over with different characters. That story is: My name is Marie. I hate myself, so I did this to dull it and I did this to feel it in a different way.
“Love Me Back” is told in a nonlinear collection of short stories. Marie gets pregnant as a teenager and ends up married to the good-guy father. But she cheats on him and cheats on him until he’s unable to ignore it and then, feeling cast into an ill-fitting role, she leaves him with the young girl. She makes a living in restaurants -- first Olive Garden then, later, an upscale steakhouse she refers to as The Restaurant. Along the way she bangs managers, co-workers, friends of co-workers, brothers, managers from different restaurants and more. In her free time, she snorts and cuts and has gooey mom thoughts about the daughter she sees during her limited amount of custody.
When I was in my 20s, I thought it was very romantic to hate yourself and treat people shitty -- like you were guided by some sort of but-this-is-just-how-I-am-ness, shrug, I can’t help it. Tierce’s Marie would fall into that category, as a woman seemingly unable to manage the job of self-care, but wholly capable of servicing strangers -- both at The Restaurant, where she is considered “golden” and in the parking lot behind the restaurant. I don’t think it’s romantic anymore. I think it’s exhausting -- especially in the case of this novel where she shows no real signs that she will ever be interested in yanking her boots free of the muck. Without a glimmer of change on the horizon, the stories begin to feel repetitious. Like, if Marie was your friend you would stand at your shared work station nodding along and wishing that if she planned on continuing to self-destruct, she would find some new ways to do it.
I can’t wait to read what she writes next, though, and my hope upon hopes is that there isn’t a man or a restaurant or an orifice or a sharp instrument anywhere near it.
“Love Me Back” is told in a nonlinear collection of short stories. Marie gets pregnant as a teenager and ends up married to the good-guy father. But she cheats on him and cheats on him until he’s unable to ignore it and then, feeling cast into an ill-fitting role, she leaves him with the young girl. She makes a living in restaurants -- first Olive Garden then, later, an upscale steakhouse she refers to as The Restaurant. Along the way she bangs managers, co-workers, friends of co-workers, brothers, managers from different restaurants and more. In her free time, she snorts and cuts and has gooey mom thoughts about the daughter she sees during her limited amount of custody.
When I was in my 20s, I thought it was very romantic to hate yourself and treat people shitty -- like you were guided by some sort of but-this-is-just-how-I-am-ness, shrug, I can’t help it. Tierce’s Marie would fall into that category, as a woman seemingly unable to manage the job of self-care, but wholly capable of servicing strangers -- both at The Restaurant, where she is considered “golden” and in the parking lot behind the restaurant. I don’t think it’s romantic anymore. I think it’s exhausting -- especially in the case of this novel where she shows no real signs that she will ever be interested in yanking her boots free of the muck. Without a glimmer of change on the horizon, the stories begin to feel repetitious. Like, if Marie was your friend you would stand at your shared work station nodding along and wishing that if she planned on continuing to self-destruct, she would find some new ways to do it.
I can’t wait to read what she writes next, though, and my hope upon hopes is that there isn’t a man or a restaurant or an orifice or a sharp instrument anywhere near it.
June 23, 2015
I'm still not quite sure what to make of this little book. On the one hand, I admire its unapologetic rawness and its truly terrific writing -- but I still need a little bit of plot to really sustain my interest in a book, even if it is short.
Instead of a novel, Love Me Back reads very much like a series of somewhat interconnected stories, recounting the various occupational anecdotes and sexual escapades of Marie, a young, single mother who goes from job to job in the restaurant industry. The narrative thread that binds these episodes together, though, is not strong enough for my particular taste and I found myself doing a bit of skimming towards the end.
Tierce is clearly a gifted writer, but her work strongly resonates with the touchstones of an MFA writing degree. One could argue that in this type of book nothing very exciting happens, but Love Me Back knows that about itself. Unabashedly character-driven, this book is literary fiction in the strongest sense of the genre -- and, while some will certainly LOVE it for its meanderings, its interiority, and its grit, it is not the type of book that is for everybody.
Instead of a novel, Love Me Back reads very much like a series of somewhat interconnected stories, recounting the various occupational anecdotes and sexual escapades of Marie, a young, single mother who goes from job to job in the restaurant industry. The narrative thread that binds these episodes together, though, is not strong enough for my particular taste and I found myself doing a bit of skimming towards the end.
Tierce is clearly a gifted writer, but her work strongly resonates with the touchstones of an MFA writing degree. One could argue that in this type of book nothing very exciting happens, but Love Me Back knows that about itself. Unabashedly character-driven, this book is literary fiction in the strongest sense of the genre -- and, while some will certainly LOVE it for its meanderings, its interiority, and its grit, it is not the type of book that is for everybody.
July 16, 2014
This is one of the best books I've read in years. Tierce has an incredible voice and I find her to be a truly inspiration debut fiction author. Her story "Suck It" (this inspiration for the novel) was wild and unforgiving and to see the book developed in it's entirety is phenomenal.
We never get the true motivation of Marie, the main character, as she spirals into long hours, late nights, sex and drugs and I so appreciate Tierce's stylistic choice in this. The scenes are raw and what we see are the hardships young women face when coming into their own. It's painful and gritty and gutsy and it forces you to think about where your own life choices could (or could have) lead you.
I'm recommending this book to everyone that I know. I think it challenges readers not to merely observe a character's story but to feel it (and feel it HARD).
We never get the true motivation of Marie, the main character, as she spirals into long hours, late nights, sex and drugs and I so appreciate Tierce's stylistic choice in this. The scenes are raw and what we see are the hardships young women face when coming into their own. It's painful and gritty and gutsy and it forces you to think about where your own life choices could (or could have) lead you.
I'm recommending this book to everyone that I know. I think it challenges readers not to merely observe a character's story but to feel it (and feel it HARD).
April 10, 2015
This book was so awful. SO awful. It's disjointed, you never know what the heck is happening or who these people are that come and go, you don't know WHY she leaves a good husband and her baby to fuck everything that moves, we never find out why she's writing these creepy stories to her kid, and THE WORST ONE OF ALL- there are no quotation marks. oh, and the book just ends. I can't find anything redeeming about this book, except that it's a book club book and we're all messaging each other and wondering what kind of agent would read this book and sign this author to be published.
One star is one too many.
One star is one too many.
October 4, 2014
I'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time, but here are some initial thoughts.
This one is not for everyone, despite the review I read proclaiming that the reader was going to recommend it to everyone. She's gonna have a lot of disappointed friends. This is a raw book--there is nothing pretty, happy, comforting about it. It is ugly (but well-written ugly.) Also, it is not plot-driven and if that's how you like your fiction, again, not for you.
The title is misleading. I don't think Marie is really all that interested in love; she's interested in replacing one pain with another. (There was a great line about this in the book and I cannot find it. Tierce said it better than I can.) Marie wants to "napalm her emotions."
Tierce was named one of the National Book Foundation's Five Under 35 in 2013 and I can't wait to see what she gives us next. This wasn't my favorite book of the year but it was compelling, well-written, and left me wanting more--not necessarily of Marie's story, but of Tierce's fiction.
(Oh, and one thing that I loved--Tierce, a former waitress herself--perfectly captures what it is like to work in a restaurant. Perfect.)
This one is not for everyone, despite the review I read proclaiming that the reader was going to recommend it to everyone. She's gonna have a lot of disappointed friends. This is a raw book--there is nothing pretty, happy, comforting about it. It is ugly (but well-written ugly.) Also, it is not plot-driven and if that's how you like your fiction, again, not for you.
The title is misleading. I don't think Marie is really all that interested in love; she's interested in replacing one pain with another. (There was a great line about this in the book and I cannot find it. Tierce said it better than I can.) Marie wants to "napalm her emotions."
Tierce was named one of the National Book Foundation's Five Under 35 in 2013 and I can't wait to see what she gives us next. This wasn't my favorite book of the year but it was compelling, well-written, and left me wanting more--not necessarily of Marie's story, but of Tierce's fiction.
(Oh, and one thing that I loved--Tierce, a former waitress herself--perfectly captures what it is like to work in a restaurant. Perfect.)
did-not-finish
May 8, 2015Character portrait of a young mother who works as a waitress and has terrible relationships/mostly bad sex with a seemingly endless stream of coworkers and customers. One of those contemporary American novels that portrays its characters' emptiness very accurately - unflinchingly - but in doing so is unbearably depressing and samey to read. I feel like there's a vogue for this sort of thing at the moment - stories described as 'raw' 'visceral' 'blisteringly honest' etc, stories with an overwhelming sense of numbness, stories supposed to be or implied to be somewhat autobiographical - and I've had enough of it, don't really need to read any more stuff like this. The author isn't untalented; this just isn't for me.
February 18, 2017
Me ha encantado, es un libro estupendo lleno de bocados de una realidad que no siempre es como imaginamos.
Muy buena protagonista
http://entremontonesdelibros.blogspot...
Muy buena protagonista
http://entremontonesdelibros.blogspot...
February 1, 2015
2.5 stars
Well that was bizarre!
I'm now having trouble remembering why it even ended up on my to-read list in the first place. It was a really different read, though, so I guess I kind of appreciated it for that. It was just such a strange and all-over-the-place kind of book. It was written in first-person narration with not very much punctuation (including no quotation marks, which for some readers might be hard to get used to), and it skipped around a lot in time. There were times when I had a hard time keeping up and wondered what the heck was going on.
Most of the time, though, I was trying to figure out the point of this book. There's absolutely zero plot — Love Me Back is just this tiny glimpse into a four-year period of this random waitress's life, and it was pretty much entirely centered on her drug use and willingness to have sex with just about anybody, featuring lots of graphic descriptions and super weird situations she'd managed to get herself into.
I thought that it was decently well-written — Marie's character was intricate, with many levels that are explored in this book. She's a tough character to like, because she makes some really bad decisions, but it's also hard not to sympathize with her, because she clearly is a lost soul who is struggling to find any sort of happiness in her life.
But I didn't find myself enjoying the read very much. There were a lot of characters that were hard to keep track of, it was difficult to navigate the timeline, and the story never actually went anywhere. There isn't a whole lot of depth. Marie is basically the same exact person she is at the beginning of the book as she is at the end. We do get a brief look at what her life was like before she got pregnant, and I'm glad that we did, because it gave the novel a bit more meaning. But everything about this was horribly depressing, and there's one point where one of the characters mentioned that, they could all decide to make better choices, but none of them want to. It was maddening.
So I left Love Me Back feeling pretty sad and not like I'd gotten much else out of it. I think that something like this would've worked better as a short story. The novel length suggests that there are going to be more dynamic elements to the plot, or even just a plot in general, both of which Love Me Back lacks. But I really liked its honesty and grittiness, as well as Tierce's ability to portray a lot about Marie's character almost entirely through "show" and not "tell."
Well that was bizarre!
I'm now having trouble remembering why it even ended up on my to-read list in the first place. It was a really different read, though, so I guess I kind of appreciated it for that. It was just such a strange and all-over-the-place kind of book. It was written in first-person narration with not very much punctuation (including no quotation marks, which for some readers might be hard to get used to), and it skipped around a lot in time. There were times when I had a hard time keeping up and wondered what the heck was going on.
Most of the time, though, I was trying to figure out the point of this book. There's absolutely zero plot — Love Me Back is just this tiny glimpse into a four-year period of this random waitress's life, and it was pretty much entirely centered on her drug use and willingness to have sex with just about anybody, featuring lots of graphic descriptions and super weird situations she'd managed to get herself into.
I thought that it was decently well-written — Marie's character was intricate, with many levels that are explored in this book. She's a tough character to like, because she makes some really bad decisions, but it's also hard not to sympathize with her, because she clearly is a lost soul who is struggling to find any sort of happiness in her life.
But I didn't find myself enjoying the read very much. There were a lot of characters that were hard to keep track of, it was difficult to navigate the timeline, and the story never actually went anywhere. There isn't a whole lot of depth. Marie is basically the same exact person she is at the beginning of the book as she is at the end. We do get a brief look at what her life was like before she got pregnant, and I'm glad that we did, because it gave the novel a bit more meaning. But everything about this was horribly depressing, and there's one point where one of the characters mentioned that, they could all decide to make better choices, but none of them want to. It was maddening.
So I left Love Me Back feeling pretty sad and not like I'd gotten much else out of it. I think that something like this would've worked better as a short story. The novel length suggests that there are going to be more dynamic elements to the plot, or even just a plot in general, both of which Love Me Back lacks. But I really liked its honesty and grittiness, as well as Tierce's ability to portray a lot about Marie's character almost entirely through "show" and not "tell."
July 21, 2014
Lost in early adulthood and the riot of the service industry, Marie attempts to numb herself with work, sex, and drugs. She's a young mother who’s never felt motherly; she gives everyone her body but keeps her heart closed; she’s a vegetarian working in an upscale steakhouse. Merritt Tierce spares no detail of Marie’s reckless self-destruction in a way that’s shocking without sensationalism. There is nothing flashy here, where a less adept writer could misstep into melodrama. Love Me Back searing, raw, and matter-of-fact. Tierce’s stunning ability to convey Marie’s desolation without just telling is effortless and real. Rarely do we get observations from our damaged narrator about her emotions—because she herself doesn’t want to look there—but when we do, they drop like anvils. We feel her ache, her desperation, her brokenness so fully. Expertly written and completely consuming. A page-turner of the least fluffy, fiercest variety.
April 30, 2014
Oh, how I wanted to like this book more. Tierce's writing is good...brutal and raw and good. I just couldn't get pulled in. I needed more. I was on guard about whether I was just a prudish soccer mom in my reaction to some of the more explicit scenes, but I wasn't shocked, I was bored. As another reviewer wrote, they just seemed mechanical and lacking motivation. I realize that was the point: Marie was acting mechanically and without any real motivation, but it didn't have enough to keep me hooked.
Tierce's writing is tight. On an academic level, I appreciate her relentless portrayal of Marie's situation. On an emotional level, I just felt like I was stuck in the rut of the same tire tracks for a long time.
Tierce's writing is tight. On an academic level, I appreciate her relentless portrayal of Marie's situation. On an emotional level, I just felt like I was stuck in the rut of the same tire tracks for a long time.
Read
December 7, 2021If you like stories with young, immature, weak, morally questionable narrators who make a string of bad life decisions—running the gamut from alcohol to drugs to illegal behavior at work to relationships, both emotional and sexual—maybe you will like this book. That isn't really my thing, so I didn't care for it. But if I had been a waitress, I could see how her perspective on the service industry would be interesting and maybe even sadly comical. And though I didn't find this book had much of a plot (if any), I didn't hate the writing.
[Edited to add: I hope I would not be this judgmental if I wrote this review now, but these were my thoughts at the time!]
[Edited to add: I hope I would not be this judgmental if I wrote this review now, but these were my thoughts at the time!]
April 23, 2016
Merritt Tierce is another brilliant new American voice like Smith Henderson, Junot Diaz, Wells Tower, Miranda July and Donald Ray Pollock. There's some kind of golden age going on right now. I don't think anyone has noticed!
Merritt plunges you into a very intense world of coke & alcohol & very very casual sex and single waitress motherhood; but it’s not the waitress stuff of let’s say Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More, it’s at one of Dallas’ very top restaurants where some of the punters will tip $300-800 and think it’s money well spent. So, you know, out of my league, I don’t know about your league. The staff do these frantic high pressure shifts but they get good money for it. In their time off, if Love Me Back is anything to go by, they’re sleazeballs and dope fiends and no one keeps their underwear about their persons for very long.
A few quotes may give you the jist of the thing. Took me until page 119 to find some that I could quote without being flagged as grossly inappropriate (“we made a sandwich on the carpet and I was the middle. I” – stopppp!!).
He was the one who had it worst for Shaila, even worse than Ahmed. You could tell by how they sat at the table – she’d be leaning back giving off this all-balls safari-guide vibe and Matt would sit forward in his chair to catch the invisible gazelles of wisdom leaping out of her mouth.
I wish I didn’t want the exotic man who knows the entire history of jazz, and instead wanted the teacher, who has flaws but whose kindness is as rare as genius.
In that restaurant all of us were off. Chipped. Everybody on the way to the curve. Maybe it’s the same in a law firm, a nail salon, whatever high or low. Maybe that’s just what it is to be alive, you’ve got that broken sooty piece of something lodged inside you making you veer left.
(Who would think of sooty?)
The Baron was this Turkish guy who pretended to be Italian and dropped by The Restaurant once or twice a year. He’d show up like we’d been waiting for him and no one else through all that intervening time, each of us frozen in uniform, in place, until his presence disseminated some magic dust to make us come alive so we could fulfil our destinies of serving him.
So my main problem, and it’s just an aesthetic puzzle, is well, is this a memoir once again wrote up and called a novel – like Dept of Speculation and The Wallcreeper? And if so, does that matter?
From an interview with Merritt Tierce:
I don’t really have a pat answer for “Is this autobiographical?” Because that is a question that I’m always asked in some form or another. I’m interested in why that is such a fascinating thing. I mean, anytime I read something—like, Junot Díaz stories, for example; I know enough about him, the person, to think, Is this based on his life? Did he do this? Is he like this as a lover? How can I find out? It seems like a really instinctive human response … I don’t know why that is. If you find out that yes, it’s totally autobiographical and they’re just calling it fiction, how do you feel? As compared to: if you find out no, they made up every word, it just happens to be like them in some ways. Are you asking that question because you think it’s evidence of greater talent or more skill as an artist, to invent things, or are you asking that because you just want to fulfil your voyeuristic urge to know? Or you want to find out if the person standing in front of you did the things you read about in this book—
Yes, she nails it. Does it matter? And yet, Diablo Cody’s excellent book Candy Girl (subtitle: My Year as an Unlikely Stripper ) is given to us as a memoir, it could just as easily have been served up as her first novel. I don’t know if it matters, it just bugs me.
Some women are going to be smiting their brows at some of this stuff, the self-harming is a little bit corny I agree (but hey, I just thought of why this is called a novel and not a memoir – it’s so Merritt can faithfully record every true detail of her former life and when someone chokes on this or that incident she may then say hey, it’s a novel you know...)
My ex punched the wall the one time he wanted to hit me, and I probably deserved it.
Conclusion:
This whirling bitter dazzling account of a life falling zigzaggedly between several reasonable possibilities into high unreasonableness is a modern American must read .
I wouldn’t let myself look away from what I was doing and to punish myself for seeing it I wouldn’t let myself fix it.
Merritt plunges you into a very intense world of coke & alcohol & very very casual sex and single waitress motherhood; but it’s not the waitress stuff of let’s say Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More, it’s at one of Dallas’ very top restaurants where some of the punters will tip $300-800 and think it’s money well spent. So, you know, out of my league, I don’t know about your league. The staff do these frantic high pressure shifts but they get good money for it. In their time off, if Love Me Back is anything to go by, they’re sleazeballs and dope fiends and no one keeps their underwear about their persons for very long.
A few quotes may give you the jist of the thing. Took me until page 119 to find some that I could quote without being flagged as grossly inappropriate (“we made a sandwich on the carpet and I was the middle. I” – stopppp!!).
He was the one who had it worst for Shaila, even worse than Ahmed. You could tell by how they sat at the table – she’d be leaning back giving off this all-balls safari-guide vibe and Matt would sit forward in his chair to catch the invisible gazelles of wisdom leaping out of her mouth.
I wish I didn’t want the exotic man who knows the entire history of jazz, and instead wanted the teacher, who has flaws but whose kindness is as rare as genius.
In that restaurant all of us were off. Chipped. Everybody on the way to the curve. Maybe it’s the same in a law firm, a nail salon, whatever high or low. Maybe that’s just what it is to be alive, you’ve got that broken sooty piece of something lodged inside you making you veer left.
(Who would think of sooty?)
The Baron was this Turkish guy who pretended to be Italian and dropped by The Restaurant once or twice a year. He’d show up like we’d been waiting for him and no one else through all that intervening time, each of us frozen in uniform, in place, until his presence disseminated some magic dust to make us come alive so we could fulfil our destinies of serving him.
So my main problem, and it’s just an aesthetic puzzle, is well, is this a memoir once again wrote up and called a novel – like Dept of Speculation and The Wallcreeper? And if so, does that matter?
From an interview with Merritt Tierce:
I don’t really have a pat answer for “Is this autobiographical?” Because that is a question that I’m always asked in some form or another. I’m interested in why that is such a fascinating thing. I mean, anytime I read something—like, Junot Díaz stories, for example; I know enough about him, the person, to think, Is this based on his life? Did he do this? Is he like this as a lover? How can I find out? It seems like a really instinctive human response … I don’t know why that is. If you find out that yes, it’s totally autobiographical and they’re just calling it fiction, how do you feel? As compared to: if you find out no, they made up every word, it just happens to be like them in some ways. Are you asking that question because you think it’s evidence of greater talent or more skill as an artist, to invent things, or are you asking that because you just want to fulfil your voyeuristic urge to know? Or you want to find out if the person standing in front of you did the things you read about in this book—
Yes, she nails it. Does it matter? And yet, Diablo Cody’s excellent book Candy Girl (subtitle: My Year as an Unlikely Stripper ) is given to us as a memoir, it could just as easily have been served up as her first novel. I don’t know if it matters, it just bugs me.
Some women are going to be smiting their brows at some of this stuff, the self-harming is a little bit corny I agree (but hey, I just thought of why this is called a novel and not a memoir – it’s so Merritt can faithfully record every true detail of her former life and when someone chokes on this or that incident she may then say hey, it’s a novel you know...)
My ex punched the wall the one time he wanted to hit me, and I probably deserved it.
Conclusion:
This whirling bitter dazzling account of a life falling zigzaggedly between several reasonable possibilities into high unreasonableness is a modern American must read .
I wouldn’t let myself look away from what I was doing and to punish myself for seeing it I wouldn’t let myself fix it.
February 19, 2018
Hacía mucho que no leía un libro del tirón. Depende del momento de tu vida en el que te encuentres, supongo: el dónde y el cómo imponen condiciones difíciles de circunvalar. A veces, pocas veces, encuentras la prosa que te salta la valla, que llega donde quiera llegar, poderosa y conquistadora. Love Me Back se compone de esa prosa. Merritt Tierce te tira un puñado de cenizas a la cara y tú le das las gracias.
La crudeza de la narrativa de la Marie protagonista es tan brutal como reconocible. Sorprende con su actitud a la vez desafiante y pasiva, sin remordimientos pero también lidiando con la incapacidad de absorber las consecuencias de sus actos. ¿Será porque son demasiado grandes, o porque en el fondo no supone diferencia alguna? ¿Importa, acaso? La cronología se enreda en una vorágine de autodestrucción, arrastrándote con ella para llevarte como testigo. ¿Quién no ha sido una herida abierta e insensible en algún momento? En carne viva, calculas que no puedes permitirte el tiempo que te llevaría la cicatrización, y en su lugar prologas con inercia y convencimiento el estado de shock, la situación de emergencia hasta que el cuerpo aguante. Y en la primera juventud, en la que todavía no sabemos quiénes somos ni para qué conservarnos, el cuerpo aguanta mucho. Sus límites se hacen manifiestos al tiempo, a veces demasiado tarde, a veces nunca, adelantados por la derecha por el fin de la vida.
La precariedad tiene muchas caras, pero todas se parecen y en sus giros terminan siendo indistinguibles. La precariedad laboral alimenta a la económica que alimenta a la familiar que alimenta a la emocional que alimenta a la corporal y esta relación no cambia coloques donde coloques sus elementos. Su operador es la pobreza, cuyos determinantes son absolutos e inescapables. Marie se entrega a la pobreza, aceptando su suerte con una resolución que se queda a un paso de ser suicida.
Todas las caras de la precariedad son sórdidas, y cualquier esfuerzo en camuflar este hecho será deshonesto y afectado. Love Me Back es el caso opuesto, recordándote con cada puntuación la necesidad de mirar lo orgánico y lo sucio y verlo por lo que es. Sin exponerlas en abierto plantea muchas preguntas importantes, como qué es el sexo sin placer, quién puede permitirse consumir drogas por recreo, quién puede permitirse expresar y consumar deseos de cualquier tipo, quién puede permitirse circunscribirse a la narrativa que llamamos "familia". Qué es una familia. Qué es una persona. Quién eres tú.
La buena prosa puede llevarte donde quiera, es el vehículo de lo que se le antoje a quien la plasme. Merritt Tierce te lleva por las sendas más abruptas para que las recorras con una milésima del daño. Y una milésima todavía duele. Pero es dolor del bueno. Del que, a lo mejor, puedes llegar a recuperarte.
La crudeza de la narrativa de la Marie protagonista es tan brutal como reconocible. Sorprende con su actitud a la vez desafiante y pasiva, sin remordimientos pero también lidiando con la incapacidad de absorber las consecuencias de sus actos. ¿Será porque son demasiado grandes, o porque en el fondo no supone diferencia alguna? ¿Importa, acaso? La cronología se enreda en una vorágine de autodestrucción, arrastrándote con ella para llevarte como testigo. ¿Quién no ha sido una herida abierta e insensible en algún momento? En carne viva, calculas que no puedes permitirte el tiempo que te llevaría la cicatrización, y en su lugar prologas con inercia y convencimiento el estado de shock, la situación de emergencia hasta que el cuerpo aguante. Y en la primera juventud, en la que todavía no sabemos quiénes somos ni para qué conservarnos, el cuerpo aguanta mucho. Sus límites se hacen manifiestos al tiempo, a veces demasiado tarde, a veces nunca, adelantados por la derecha por el fin de la vida.
La precariedad tiene muchas caras, pero todas se parecen y en sus giros terminan siendo indistinguibles. La precariedad laboral alimenta a la económica que alimenta a la familiar que alimenta a la emocional que alimenta a la corporal y esta relación no cambia coloques donde coloques sus elementos. Su operador es la pobreza, cuyos determinantes son absolutos e inescapables. Marie se entrega a la pobreza, aceptando su suerte con una resolución que se queda a un paso de ser suicida.
Todas las caras de la precariedad son sórdidas, y cualquier esfuerzo en camuflar este hecho será deshonesto y afectado. Love Me Back es el caso opuesto, recordándote con cada puntuación la necesidad de mirar lo orgánico y lo sucio y verlo por lo que es. Sin exponerlas en abierto plantea muchas preguntas importantes, como qué es el sexo sin placer, quién puede permitirse consumir drogas por recreo, quién puede permitirse expresar y consumar deseos de cualquier tipo, quién puede permitirse circunscribirse a la narrativa que llamamos "familia". Qué es una familia. Qué es una persona. Quién eres tú.
La buena prosa puede llevarte donde quiera, es el vehículo de lo que se le antoje a quien la plasme. Merritt Tierce te lleva por las sendas más abruptas para que las recorras con una milésima del daño. Y una milésima todavía duele. Pero es dolor del bueno. Del que, a lo mejor, puedes llegar a recuperarte.
July 19, 2014
I'm giving this book 2 stars because it is well written. She doesn't use quotation marks at all, and while that's an interesting way of writing, it can become confusing/tiring at times.
Be prepared for graphic sex scenes that don't let up at all for the first half of the book. Then be ready for detailed descriptions of male characters that mean nothing to the actual story. Like, long, drawn out details about how they smell, talk, walk, what their "packages" look like (ew).
I read a review that said the author is "trying too hard." I agree. She doesn't seem to be able to capture how people talk in real life. She uses a lot of stereotypes. This is especially true of the Latino characters.
Be prepared for graphic sex scenes that don't let up at all for the first half of the book. Then be ready for detailed descriptions of male characters that mean nothing to the actual story. Like, long, drawn out details about how they smell, talk, walk, what their "packages" look like (ew).
I read a review that said the author is "trying too hard." I agree. She doesn't seem to be able to capture how people talk in real life. She uses a lot of stereotypes. This is especially true of the Latino characters.
May 8, 2014
Read this in a day because I couldn't put it down. Marie, the main character, is broken and raw and smart... And I feel like I know her even though we have little in common. A terrific read but not for the prudish. I'm looking forward to Tierce's next work.
November 2, 2017
Difícil de definir, brutal,real, pero escrita como si el autor estuviera empleando una ametralladora. No la recomiendo a todo el mundo pero si buscas algo que se sale de los estereotipos la vida de Marie es un buen libro para salir un poco de ellos.
February 24, 2021
parts of this were great and poignant but it didn’t rlly rock my world. would have been stronger with more focus on the main character in parts vs describing people around her
December 1, 2015
It's hard to put a rating on this, but I'm thinking four if only because of how quickly it drew me in. I read 70 percent of it in excerpts at work, and on my lunch break; the second I cracked the cover I knew I was going to keep reading until I finished. It's essentially Waiter Rant plus Crank, only without Hopkins' just-say-no agenda. There's no moralizing, just what is, and what is is pretty damn rough sometimes. Not for anyone who doesn't read sex scenes.
Side note: Not living in New York or Baltimore or Chicago I don't often get the experience of reading a book set in places I know, and it was fun to see her mention streets I drive down and neighborhoods I know. You can connect with a book in a different way when the character says she has a dry cleaner's on Greenville and Belmont and you know the place because you were just there last night.
Side note: Not living in New York or Baltimore or Chicago I don't often get the experience of reading a book set in places I know, and it was fun to see her mention streets I drive down and neighborhoods I know. You can connect with a book in a different way when the character says she has a dry cleaner's on Greenville and Belmont and you know the place because you were just there last night.
September 15, 2014
What a long spiral down! Tierce's portrayal of a self-destructive waitress is fascinating, but at times I had difficulty following the narrative. I guess being so far removed from my table waiting days made it hard for me to understand what she was trying to convey in many scenes. Telling the story out of chronological order did not help matters. Finally, I kept trying to find the point of the detailed descriptions of random characters in the second half of the book. I came to realize there was no point other than to show that Tierce could write a very vivid description. Love Me Back is a very quick read but not recommended for those who shy away from graphic sex scenes.
January 16, 2015
Love Me Back is a novel about a young woman with a bright future who gets pregnant just as she's graduating high school and, instead of journeying off to Yale, waits tables and travels down a rabbit hole of sex and drugs.
My sister-in-law gave me this book for Christmas; the author is another one of her classmates from the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. I'd love to love it, but honestly it really was not the book for me. I did not like the character and did not like reading about her destructive behavior.
My sister-in-law gave me this book for Christmas; the author is another one of her classmates from the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. I'd love to love it, but honestly it really was not the book for me. I did not like the character and did not like reading about her destructive behavior.
August 15, 2014
Solid, assured prose elevates this novel to a level above its peers. Towards the end, right as I was prepared to say it becomes a little monotonous in its home stretch, Tierce deftly reveals a deeper interior to the protagonist that I found quite rewarding.
July 27, 2016
E va bene, lo ammetto: la storia della cameriera caruccia, libertina e un poco instabile mi attirava.
Però mezza delusione.
Storia senza sviluppo e stile per nulla indimenticabile.
Bruttino, inconcludente e noioso. [57/100]
Però mezza delusione.
Storia senza sviluppo e stile per nulla indimenticabile.
Bruttino, inconcludente e noioso. [57/100]
October 25, 2017
Muy bueno, muy muy bueno.
Una pincelada de realidad y crudeza, contada con mayor naturalidad de la que solemos hacer uso.
Mi opinión completa:
http://buscando-mi-equilibrio.blogspo...
Una pincelada de realidad y crudeza, contada con mayor naturalidad de la que solemos hacer uso.
Mi opinión completa:
http://buscando-mi-equilibrio.blogspo...
February 22, 2016
Storia di una cameriera, ma anche storia di una madre, e storia di un’autodistruzione. Non c’è né apocalisse, né redenzione. È il percorso di una donna molto giovane attraverso la propria sofferenza, narrato con voce ingenua e inconsapevole, eppure a tratti lucidissima.
È una storia di incontri sessuali dove il piacere sessuale è assente, con poche eccezioni. Il sesso raccontato non è mai eccitante perché da esso trapela sempre il motivo costante dello squallore e dell’autolesionismo. Si potrebbe definire un romanzo antierotico. Lo squallore a cui Marie viene sottoposta è quello che lei ricerca con dedizione. Lo fa per annullarsi, anzi; per annullare il dolore con altro dolore. Le numerose figure maschili finiscono sempre per diventare gli aguzzini di Marie, col candore di una totale mancanza di empatia che li caratterizza dal primo all’ultimo.
Merritt Tierce evita accuratamente di dare giudizi espliciti. La narrazione potrebbe essere interpretata come un racconto di Marie alla figlia.
Qui qualche link a interviste all’autrice, letture interessanti che danno l’idea di che personaggio intenso e onesto sia.
http://www.edizionisur.it/sotto-il-vu...
http://www.minimaetmoralia.it/wp/disc...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/opi...
Lette queste cose capirete ancora meglio perché Merritt Tierce è una persona veramente simpatica, nel senso in cui di solito non si intende la simpatia. Chiarezza, concisione, determinazione nello svelare anche gli aspetti scomodi, quelli con cui la gente non ha nessuna voglia di empatizzare, quelli in cui nessuno si vuole riconoscere; sia quando dice cose sacrosante sull’aborto, sia quando parla della sua scrittura.
Micidale l’intervista di Vanni Santoni sul metodo, in cui Tierce esordisce dicendo: “Scrivo zero ore al giorno: ecco la verità”. Sta rispondendo a una domanda alla quale di solito scrittori e scrittrici reagiscono con una ragionevole spiegazione delle proprie abitudini, della timeline quotidiana per trovare la concentrazione eccetera. Tierce invece dice: “Nel tentativo di darmi un metodo ho cercato di creare ogni tipo di spazio per la scrittura, è diventata quasi una vera e propria abitudine – e non ha dato alcun frutto”, continuando con: “La tragica verità è che quando va bene mi ritrovo a scrivere in aereo o in aeroporto, perché sono situazioni in cui non si può fare nient’altro, se sono in casa mi scopro anche a mettermi a riordinare pur di non scrivere, insomma diciamocelo: sono un modello pessimo per chiunque voglia fare questo mestiere”.
In un’altra intervista chiarisce come Carne viva sia un libro ambientato soprattutto in un ristorante, che parla della vita dei camerieri, e che il sesso, la droga etc. facciano parte della vicenda non solo per concretizzare il bisogno autolesionista di Marie, ma anche perché spesso fanno parte dello stile di vita legato a quella particolare professione.
È una storia di incontri sessuali dove il piacere sessuale è assente, con poche eccezioni. Il sesso raccontato non è mai eccitante perché da esso trapela sempre il motivo costante dello squallore e dell’autolesionismo. Si potrebbe definire un romanzo antierotico. Lo squallore a cui Marie viene sottoposta è quello che lei ricerca con dedizione. Lo fa per annullarsi, anzi; per annullare il dolore con altro dolore. Le numerose figure maschili finiscono sempre per diventare gli aguzzini di Marie, col candore di una totale mancanza di empatia che li caratterizza dal primo all’ultimo.
Merritt Tierce evita accuratamente di dare giudizi espliciti. La narrazione potrebbe essere interpretata come un racconto di Marie alla figlia.
Qui qualche link a interviste all’autrice, letture interessanti che danno l’idea di che personaggio intenso e onesto sia.
http://www.edizionisur.it/sotto-il-vu...
http://www.minimaetmoralia.it/wp/disc...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/opi...
Lette queste cose capirete ancora meglio perché Merritt Tierce è una persona veramente simpatica, nel senso in cui di solito non si intende la simpatia. Chiarezza, concisione, determinazione nello svelare anche gli aspetti scomodi, quelli con cui la gente non ha nessuna voglia di empatizzare, quelli in cui nessuno si vuole riconoscere; sia quando dice cose sacrosante sull’aborto, sia quando parla della sua scrittura.
Micidale l’intervista di Vanni Santoni sul metodo, in cui Tierce esordisce dicendo: “Scrivo zero ore al giorno: ecco la verità”. Sta rispondendo a una domanda alla quale di solito scrittori e scrittrici reagiscono con una ragionevole spiegazione delle proprie abitudini, della timeline quotidiana per trovare la concentrazione eccetera. Tierce invece dice: “Nel tentativo di darmi un metodo ho cercato di creare ogni tipo di spazio per la scrittura, è diventata quasi una vera e propria abitudine – e non ha dato alcun frutto”, continuando con: “La tragica verità è che quando va bene mi ritrovo a scrivere in aereo o in aeroporto, perché sono situazioni in cui non si può fare nient’altro, se sono in casa mi scopro anche a mettermi a riordinare pur di non scrivere, insomma diciamocelo: sono un modello pessimo per chiunque voglia fare questo mestiere”.
In un’altra intervista chiarisce come Carne viva sia un libro ambientato soprattutto in un ristorante, che parla della vita dei camerieri, e che il sesso, la droga etc. facciano parte della vicenda non solo per concretizzare il bisogno autolesionista di Marie, ma anche perché spesso fanno parte dello stile di vita legato a quella particolare professione.
October 24, 2017
But when you fall asleep I go into the bathroom and do lines off the map of the steer. I read about the differences between Kobe and Wagyu and I feel replete with the beauty of your small self. Just imagining it—the everything of you—my body tingles and quivers like the air inside a guitar. I am freezing. I get into bed with you. You like staying with me because you get to sleep with me. You are so warm but I can’t stop shivering. I feel a soaring bliss—I adore you—I feel a plummeting ugly resentment—I am a pile of shit falling endlessly down a dark shaft, I am the hate that hurled the shit and the fear inside the hurled shit. If you slip out one stitch in your brain high and low are the same. I don’t realize I’ve said that aloud until you turn over to face me. Mama, you say, what’s wrong? I see in your face the deepest empathy and your mouth pulls down. I realize nothing else is happening in your life at this moment. You are here with your mother who is crying, so you cry too.
-
I did the ugly one first. Went to a bar in his neighborhood, drank some whiskey with him.
I ask my memory, Why did I take each next step? There was a hateful man who once said I am a step skipper but no, each step was taken. That one, then that one, then another, each voluntary. Whatever is in me that makes decisions is now full of an accretion of plaque, the chalky consequence of, paradoxically, so many hollow moments.
tracey emin's my bed
August 8, 2016
This is a story about a waitress struggling to make a living, and as someone who has never worked in the restaurant business, I must say that this book opened my eyes to some of the hidden realities of the service industry.
Marie gets pregnant at age 17 and marries the father of her daughter, but soon into their marriage she begins sleeping with men indiscriminately, allowing them to debase and use her in ways that parallel the debasement she experiences every night at work. This is the beginning of her self-destruction, which culminates in her losing custody of her daughter and continuing to spiral downward into a life of drugs and self-harm.
At one point in this visceral, unflinching novel, Marie makes the following statement about her shocking promiscuity: “It wasn’t about pleasure; it was about how some kinds of pain make fine antidotes to others.”
It seems that this philosophy can be applied to almost every other aspect of her life, as well, and such a simple line provides stunning insight into her relentlessly self-destructive behaviors.
The subject matter can be tough to read. It’s hard to watch anyone sink to such depths, especially when it’s so abundantly clear that it’s a reaction to immense inner pain. Merritt Tierce writes with sparse, precise, razor sharp prose that perfectly match the raw grittiness of the content.
There are points at which Marie’s story becomes repetitive and tiresome, but this was the only downside. If you find yourself drawn to dark, harsh realism, Love Me Back is well worth a read.
Marie gets pregnant at age 17 and marries the father of her daughter, but soon into their marriage she begins sleeping with men indiscriminately, allowing them to debase and use her in ways that parallel the debasement she experiences every night at work. This is the beginning of her self-destruction, which culminates in her losing custody of her daughter and continuing to spiral downward into a life of drugs and self-harm.
At one point in this visceral, unflinching novel, Marie makes the following statement about her shocking promiscuity: “It wasn’t about pleasure; it was about how some kinds of pain make fine antidotes to others.”
It seems that this philosophy can be applied to almost every other aspect of her life, as well, and such a simple line provides stunning insight into her relentlessly self-destructive behaviors.
The subject matter can be tough to read. It’s hard to watch anyone sink to such depths, especially when it’s so abundantly clear that it’s a reaction to immense inner pain. Merritt Tierce writes with sparse, precise, razor sharp prose that perfectly match the raw grittiness of the content.
There are points at which Marie’s story becomes repetitive and tiresome, but this was the only downside. If you find yourself drawn to dark, harsh realism, Love Me Back is well worth a read.
February 19, 2015
Edit to add: I remembered where I really read this before. The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer! I would bet a lot of tip money this author is a fan of Twin Peaks. How else could he explain practically lifting sex scene straight from that masterpiece?
I felt like I had read this book before, probably because I used to write stuff like this when I was 13. The threesome in the moving truck? The blow job on the inversion table? Sex in the office AGAIN? Give me a break.
If you've never worked in food service or retail or customer service and you want to get the "inside scoop" from someone who thinks it's really cool, or you just want to read about a sad, dumb single mom waitress who has sex a lot, read this. If you have actually worked with people like this or used to write stories like this when you were a sad, dumb, lonely tween, skip it, because you will get motion sickness from rolling your eyes so much.
I felt like I had read this book before, probably because I used to write stuff like this when I was 13. The threesome in the moving truck? The blow job on the inversion table? Sex in the office AGAIN? Give me a break.
If you've never worked in food service or retail or customer service and you want to get the "inside scoop" from someone who thinks it's really cool, or you just want to read about a sad, dumb single mom waitress who has sex a lot, read this. If you have actually worked with people like this or used to write stories like this when you were a sad, dumb, lonely tween, skip it, because you will get motion sickness from rolling your eyes so much.
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