Flat Broke with Two Goats - Jennifer McGaha

This was a book I saw and disregarded, but then it came up again as the Big Library Read.  I probably should have factored this in to reading it, because I actually disliked the last Big Library Read (The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett) quite a bit.  But hey, if everyone was reading it, I wanted to be cognizant of what everyone was talking about, and so I picked it up from the library.

This is a memoir of a time when McGaha and her husband owed over a hundred thousand dollars in taxes to the federal government and over eight thousand to the state of North Carolina.  They lost their house and the friends they had bought it from in the process.  They moved to a crumbling and snake-infested cabin in the Appalachians.  And McGaha blamed her husband for all of it, as he had handled their accounts, even though she was complicit in it all.  You can imagine what a strain this could be on a marriage.

McGaha says she doesn't blame her husband, not entirely, though she certainly put all the blame on him when these events first unfolded.  But really, she still does seem to be blaming him entirely, and she certainly never demonstrated a willingness to take ownership of their financial situation, either before the owed taxes or after it.  She worked as a part-time English instructor at a college, and when she realized she'd need to get a full-time job, she sniffed and turned her nose up at anything that required her to dress professionally (even business casual!) or exhibit the barest minimum of organization, saying she couldn't do it and who would hire her anyway?  This does not seem to bode well for her students; how many papers must she have lost or grades must she have bungled if she couldn't be organized?  Excuses.  I smell them.  Really, what she seems to have wanted was to kick back her feet, drink mixed drinks, and let someone do all the work for her.  And to be fair, who doesn't want that?  But we can't all have that, and that's what McGaha seems to refuse to accept, heading for the hills as soon as things turn sour.

McGaha's background is in writing, and some of the writing here is absolutely lovely.  The descriptions of the Appalachians, of food, are wonderful.  But the entire book is so suffused with McGaha's bumbling around and refusing to take personal responsibility (Oh, you mean moving several states away from your spouse, leaving him in the snake-ridden cabin while you bopped around living your #bestlife, didn't result in your marriage getting better?  WHO KNEW?) that it's hard to see past the author's entitlement and how she wallows in how her privilege didn't give her everything she ever wanted by default.  And even if that was how the events unfolded--and things do unfold in less than satisfactory manners--the writing of a memoir is a time to reflect on how you ended up where you are, what you could have done better, and how the events of your life have changed you.  McGaha doesn't do any of that, which makes this come across as, "Hey, I'll write a book about this and make lots of money and pay off my taxes!"  Which at least has her doing something, but probably not the best something, particularly when considering the product she put out for that purpose.

I had initially given this book three stars for the writing, but upon reflection, I'm downgrading it to two.  If you liked The Rules Do Not Apply for Ariel Levy's entitlement and avoidance of responsibility, you'll probably like this too.  Otherwise, stay away.

2 stars out of 5.