Stephanie Hart

This book was okay, maybe not my type of book. Stephanie Hart excelled at painting pictures in my mind, but I otherwise felt the book was focused on darkness and death. While life always has its ups and downs, I felt that this book focused very much on the downs and I personally prefer to read books about the ups. I also found the order of some of the vignettes to be disjointed at times. I did not totally dislike the book, but perhaps I failed to understand why I would like to know about this person's history.… (más)

I had mixed feelings about this book. I like the idea of organizing a memoir in the form of separate but connected essays, and I enjoyed the first three chapters, in which Stephanie Hart writes about her childhood and youth through the lens of her troubled relationship with her mother and her experiences at boarding school and then high school. But she lost me when she got to the family history. It was such an abrupt turn in what had been a loose, but still connected, narrative. And I had no real interest in these people she was writing about. I hadn't met them before. None of it was about her relationships with these people or how her experiences with them affected her life. So since this is supposed to be a memoir about Hart's life as it interacted with the people who helped form and shape her, why would I care about them?

It's well-written and definitely compelling in parts, but ultimately the book fails because it doesn't hold together.… (más)

Mirror Mirror by Stephanie Hart is a series of short, one- to two-page vignettes of a personal nature, dipping into family history and memory. Why read stories about another person's life? What makes one person's stories worth telling and sharing? I am a fan of personal narratives and memoirs; however, Mirror Mirror has nothing to offer an outside reader. From the very first paragraph, the work fails to grab, nevermind hold, audience interest. This is the world in cliché and incomplete thoughts.

The lack of strong writing and abundance of choppy prose distorts the individual stories and disorients readers. The author seems to sling cheap phrases at readers in a failed attempt to reach a profound understanding of her life. What she tries to make significant comes across as incomplete and juvenile. This book consists entirely of piecemeal construction reminiscent of a child's mind and ability. I recommend skipping this read.… (más)