Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir
Written and Narrated By: Jean Guerrero
Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
Oh UGH!!! Where to start? Where to start?
Here we go: The cover art for Crux shows an individual holding a child. At first I thought it was meant to portray Guerrero’s father holding little girl Jean. Then I kept listening to the book and decided it was Jean holding her ego. Then I kept listening to the book and decided it was Jean’s ego holding Jean.
Oh. My. GOD!!! Not since the WOEful Unbecoming have I listened to somebody who turned EVERYthing into something about her.
At first I thought it was going to be a truly extraordinary book, and indeed the premise is very, very compelling: What if Jean’s father, a schizophrenic, was actually telling the truth about CIA tests done on him? And what if the man’s mental illness was actually true-to-life shamanic abilities? Add to that, the beginning of the book chronicles, in vivid prose, something that is very dear to me but is very hard to take, childhood mental illness? I thought I was in for a brutal and bumpy ride.
And my husband LOVED the print version! How could anything go wrong?
Well, let’s start with Guerrero narrating this herself. When an author narrates their own work, you know you’re getting their intention for every single word written, the emphasis placement, the nuance conveyed. OBVIOUSLY, Guerrero means for every single word written to be fraught with passion and import. I mean, people are we listening? This is very important to Guerrero: She means business. And she goes to great lengths to tell us she’s a dispassionate journalist (All about facts), and she knows her stuff about neuroscience also (All about chemicals). She is THE perfect judge of her father’s state; she is THE perfect judge of all the facts she dug up by going through government agencies. Grating, yes—she is, after all, infusing each word with drama! Drama! DRAMA! but okay, I was still with her.
But then we go through so much of her own life, and she tries to come off as an angst-ridden individual when actually she’s just a self-absorbed, petty, obnoxious individual with little to no empathy for the plights of others: Total Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Her father isn’t even part of her life, until she becomes a disillusioned git with a valley girl drawl, and she wants to get down and dirty with her past. She’s tired of being the beneficiary of a privileged upbringing, of privileged schooling, and part of her wanting to see through the eyes of her father is that she just reeeeally WANTS to live amongst cockroaches in Mexico. This is the story of Jean Guerrero being reeeeally happy that her last name is Guerrero.
While she’s telling us of her father, who’s a very ill man, she’s actually romanticizing the HELL outta mental illness (At one point he’s so ill he has to have blood removed, decides not enough was removed, drains himself by sticking and stabbing, and then goes on to pass out behind the wheel, rolling over his car in a horrific crash. Guerrero relays this with jaunty, oh-he’s-so-funny tones, but I’m telling you: The man is ILL! I did NOT get a chuckle from this endearing little escapade).
And when she gives us a verbatim of a “conversation” she had with her father which was actually just his psychotic rambling, she tells us that it’s her best writing… Uhm, you’re just telling us what you TRANSCRIBED, Jean! You didn’t create his words. And look at those words: The man isn’t deep; he’s nuts. Don’t get me wrong, I have a LOT of empathy for the mentally ill, but I will NOT romanticize what is a hellhole of a pit.
When she’s digging into her father’s lineage, that’s interesting: His mother’s story is a tearjerker. But that is oh sooo little of the entire book. Mostly, this is of everything being all about Jean. She tells us that Mexico, this land of Curandera and of the Chupacabra, is trying to KILL her. And it’s like, no sweetheart, you got drunk and you high-heeled down a manhole. Again: drama! Drama! DRAMA! She went topless during a dip in the ocean and got stuck in a riptide. PTSD!!! drama! Drama! DRAMA!
I, who usually listen at x1.25 speed jacked it all the way up to x2 to just be done with her whining about how serious her plight was, with her jauntiness of the endearingly whacked out things her father suffered (And by the way, the man self-medicates with alcohol, with drugs, with whatever he can get his hands on). I couldn’t finish this book fast enough.
And by the way: At x2 speed, Guerrero sounds only melodramatic: The valley girl accent, mercifully, is somewhat muted.
Oh wait! Maybe I should’ve listened to the entire thing on Mute?
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