about a book

jaclynday:

What I’ve Read: Normal Gets You Nowhere by Kelly Cutrone

I made no secret of the fact that I loved Kelly’s first book If You Have To Cry Go Outside. I thought the advice was sound and it was interesting learning more tidbits about her personal life and work. It was a fast, worthwhile read and I still recommend it to people.

You can imagine how excited I was to read her second book, Normal Gets You Nowhere, and I know some of you were looking forward to it as well. I had high expectations, even though I didn’t expect it would be a same song, second verse situation. I knew she wouldn’t do a lazy remix of the first book, so I was wondering what direction she’d take it in.

This book is a short (shorter than the first) take on all sorts of things Kelly has opinions on: religion, friendship, sex, holidays…to name a few. There’s also a chapter devoted to Eleanor Roosevelt, an inspirational figure to Kelly (“a feminine ideal”) and one about a breakthrough she had in connecting with her feminine, God-like self.

So, it’s uneven. Very uneven. It bounces around a bit, feels a little thrown together and, while containing important nuggets of advice like her first, has a distinct tone of spirituality throughout that was only briefly touched on in her first book. For some readers, this could really throw you…or turn you off. She alternates between the hard-as-nails personality we’ve all seen on TV and this super-compassionate, super-spiritual woman. The result is a book that I can’t really wrap my head around. I’m not sure what kind of book she set out to write. In the forward, she mentions that her editor wanted her to do “Kelly’s take” on the 10 Commandments and she refused, wanting to write her own thing. Well, this is her own thing—that much is evident. But it’s also wildly bizarre one minute and becomes coherent the next.

Anyway, it’s a short book (I read it in one hour) and does have some valuable advice, but ultimately, I found it more confusing than anything else. Unlike the satisfaction I had when I finished reading the first, I came away from this book with a, “Did I miss something?” reaction.

Have you read this book? What are your thoughts? If you haven’t read it, will you?