Please Note:  I received an advance audio copy of this novel from Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review.  This did not influence the opinions in my review in any way.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

’m crawling around on the bathroom floor, picking up pieces of myself. These pieces are not a metaphor. They are actual pieces.

Twenty years after the publication of her iconic Shutterbabe, we re-meet Deborah Copaken at her darkly comedic nadir: battered, broke, divorcing, dissected, and dying—literally—on sexism’s battlefield as she deliriously scoops up what she believes to be her internal organs, which have fallen out of her body, into a glass Tupperware container before heading off to the hospital for emergency surgery . . . in an UberPool.

Part cri de coeur cautionary tale, part dystopian tragicomedy, Ladyparts is Copaken’s irreverent inventory of both the female body and the body politic of womanhood in America. With her journalist’s eye, her novelist’s heart, and her performer’s sense of timing, she provides a frontline account of one woman brought to her knees by the one-two-twelve punch of divorce, solo motherhood, lack of healthcare, unaffordable childcare, shady landlords, her father’s death, college tuitions, sexual harassment, corporate indifference, ageism, sexism, and just plain old bad luck. Plus seven serious illnesses, one on top of the other, which provide the book’s narrative skeleton: vagina, uterus, breast, heart, cervix, brain, and lungs. She keeps bouncing back from each bum body part and finding the black humor in every setback, but in her slippery struggle to survive a steep plunge off the middle-class ladder, she is suddenly awoken to what it means to have no safety net.

Turning her Harlem home into a commune to pay rent and have childcare, she trades her life as a bestselling novelist to apply for full-time corporate gigs that come with health insurance but often not scruples. She gets fired from a health magazine for being unhealthy; laid off from a PR firm for rushing home to deal with a child’s medical emergency; and sexually harassed out of her newspaper column, only to be grilled by the FBI when her harasser is offered a plum job in the White House.

Side-splittingly funny one minute, a freak horror show the next, and quintessentially American, Ladyparts is an era-defining memoir for our time.

Review:

I find reviewing memoirs to be a bit difficult.  How do you review someone's life?  But I will say that author Deborah Copaken has filled this book with humor, and brutal honesty.  She also raises important issues about corporate culture, healthcare in America, and in particular, women's health issues.  At times the author uses shocking imagery to demonstrate just how disgusting it is to have reproductive organs.  But then she also shows the immense power that we have to create life.  I listened to the audiobook version of this book, narrated by the author, herself.

What I Liked:

Narration:

Who better to narrate this memoir than the person who wrote it!  Deborah Copaken does a terrific job of using her voice to evoke the raw emotions of some truly traumatic events.  She was the perfect choice to narrate this book.

Honest Portrayals:

The author spends the first part of the memoir discussing how her marriage collapsed, which I didn't particularly enjoy.  But it's a set up for the meat of the book, which is how it is to be a single parent scrounging for health insurance in New York City.  Her whole mission in life is about making sure she has health insurance.  This may seem extreme to those of us who have good health coverage.  But for many people, it is a very real struggle.  This means taking jobs where she is over-qualified, or severely under-paid in order to get that all important health benefit.  And often, Copaken must compromise her values, as when she worked for a pharmaceutical company, using her writing skills to push medicines.  

She is also honest about dating and sex as a single person.  She makes no apologies for needing the human contact that sexual encounters provide.  And she finds a way to do that without the entanglements of a committed relationship.  But she didn't start out with those expectations.  She shows the process, which is often filled with wrong turns and heartbreak.  

Women's Health Issues:

The author has had some truly horrible health issues to deal with.  She's starts out having a hysterectomy, and then many things go wrong.  I can't begin to spell all the procedures she has had to endure, but, if you read the book, she describes them in graphic detail.  As many woman know all too well, Copaken's symptoms were often dismissed by her doctors, and her concerns were not addressed.  At times, their neglect brought her to the brink of death.  

While this may seem unappealing to read about, I found learning about her health issues to be instructive.  It also goes to show you that people really need to advocate for themselves (and bring a back up person to assist).   Copaken often does everything right, but still has issues with the quality of her care.  A bit depressing to be sure, but I also admired her determination to get what she needed from her doctors.

Healthcare in America:

The heart of the book is about why it's such a bad idea to tie healthcare to employment.  As a freelance writer, Deborah Copaken has been quite successful and has made a reputation for herself as a strong advocate for women.  But as successful as she has been in her career, she has struggled over the years to find adequate health coverage.  When you have children who need checkups, shots, and so forth, and you also have significant health issues, this becomes the number one consideration in accepting a job.  What I find sad for Copaken is how much more could she had achieved if she didn't need to worry about healthcare coverage.  Think of what we are losing from our Creatives in American society because they are shackled by this burden.

What I was Mixed About:

As much as I liked this memoir, I do have a bone to pick with how she discussed her ex-husband.  Her ex-husband was diagnosed with high-functioning Autism (what we used to call Asperger's Syndrome).  And this colors all of her commentary about whey the marriage failed.  I didn't like that she blamed all of their problems on Autism.  She even had statistics to make the point that (apparently) most marriages between neuro-typical people and people with Autism end in divorce.  Perhaps that's true, but I also think each situation is unique.  She mostly focused on the fact that her emotional needs weren't being met by her husband.  But she never addresses if she was meeting his needs.  Obviously, these two weren't compatible over the long-term.  And she shows how she really made an effort to be understanding of his personality.  But it still troubled me that she blamed the end of their marriage on something her ex had no control over.

Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Release Date:  August 3rd, 2021

Author:  Deborah Copaken

Narrator:  Deborah Copaken

Print Publisher:  Random House

Page Length:  480 Pages

Audio Book Publisher:  Penguin Random House Audio

Audio Length:  16 hours, 37 minutes

Genre:  Memoir

Source:  Penguin Random House Audio

Format:  Audiobook

Recommendation:  I found this memoir to be very powerful, and I highly recommend it.