Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith is one of the BlogHer Book Club books – but I did not receive a review copy and am not blogging about this as part of the book club. I’m reading it because it sounds good and because I’ve read Claire’s blog for YEARS.
I was a little nervous about reading Rules of Inheritance. I knew Claire was an amazing writer from reading her blog but I don’t always love books written by bloggers. And then there was the whole non-chronological thing – that made me nervous. I shouldn’t have been. It was excellent, in fact, I don’t think I would have enjoyed the book as much if it had been written chronologically.
I also love that this was truly a memoir without any self-helpy stuff tossed in, which often happens in grief and loss memoirs. Claire’s not preachy. She’s just really honest about how screwed up she was, how horrible it was, and how she came out on the other side. Beautifully written, as expected. I loved it.
(Side Note: I don’t know if she never blogged about her trip to the Philippines or if I missed that but her telling of her trip made me smile (while yelling YOU ARE CRAZY) – having lived there, it doesn’t surprise me that she found people who were kind to her along the way but it also would not have surprised me had some truly horrible things happened. That’s how it is/was there.)