How do you give feedback when someone has written their life story?

An honest encoutment of the years' Mary Fairhurst Breen was surrounded by abuse, including mental illness, drugs, alcoholism and more; she manages to find her way through despite a less than perfect introduction into the world.

There are so many lessons to be learned throughout the pages of the book, and Breen's life experiences are nothing short of extraordinary; however, it would have been nice to have a few fewer anecdotal moments and focus more on the situation as it happened.

Any Kind of Luck at All was a quick and relatively easy read. More like an episodic retelling of the authors life—its ups and downs. I did find the tone very approachable and while it oftentimes felt a bit hard to keep up with the pacing and story, since it isn't written in a linear fashion. However, once I started getting the hang of it, this decision felt very true and made sense with the story. As it represents not how our lives happen, but how we remember them. Excellent read, I would recommend it to anyone really but especially those interested in the nitty gritty of life.

Reviewed for THIS Magazine's November/December 2021 issue:

Mary Fairhurst Breen’s debut, Any Kind of Luck at All, is at once a heartbreaking and hilarious memoir examining her life as a queer single mom in Toronto as she discusses her experiences surrounding parenthood, mental illness, and addiction. At times, especially near the beginning, Fairhurst Breen’s narration is scattered, a collection of memories tied together with a tenuous string. As the work progresses, these slivers give rise to a depth of both character as well as understanding so that while the memoir stands at 232 pages, we get to know Fairhurst Breen intimately through her vivid depiction of herself.

2 stars

The memoir is told in a collection of vignette-esque entries surrounding, obviously, different topics of her life, and I really hate to say this but I lost interest pretty quickly. I felt like a lot of the stories started to meander from the main point and it caused a bit of frustration especially when it happened during vignettes that I was enjoying. I don’t think it would have been such an issue to me if it didn’t happen many times throughout out the memoir. And there were ugh I feel bad saying this but there were many moments of somewhat obnoxious bragging peppered heavily throughout the book, for example a moment the author called her “#metoojunior moment” as well as another moment, that felt like the author really wanted us to be in awe of, where she added her grandma’s surname to her name as a young adult “heroically” stating to a judge that if she didn’t do this then her grandma’s name would disappear and then stated that it was her unconscious “mini-feminist” answer.

I don’t know it I felt that this memoir annoyed me more than it made me enjoy my time reading it, which again I hate to say with any book but more so with memoirs because it surrounds a person’s life and who am I to judge aspects of a person’s life that they feel compelled or proud to share in a book. Overall I think this is for a specific type of person, that is not me, and the things that I didn’t like could possibly be things that others will really love. So take my opinion with a grain of salt and if the synopsis intrigues you try it out.

ARC given by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

In Any Kind of Luck at All, we move through the life of Mary Fairhurst Breen, exploring her past and present. We learn of her familial struggles, her personal struggles, her joys and losses, and how she’s gotten to where she is today. Some of the darker themes include mental illness, alcoholism, unemployment, drug use/abuse. Please look up trigger warnings for this book if you are sensitive to certain topics.

While you might expect a book full of such themes to be entirely dark, emotional, and depressing, she has a mostly positive outlook. Despite having experienced so much grief, loss, and turmoil, she remains calm and optimistic. Fairhurst Breen incorporates her own humor and lightheadedness the the draining emotional events explored in this book. As a reader, the humor and optimism kept me from feeling like the book was too heavy to read.

I rated this book 3 stars because while it was engaging enough, it often read a bit like randomized journal entries. I won’t explicitly spoil it, but it felt like we got to the heart of what Fairhurst Breen wanted to talk about when we got near the end and learned a lot more about Sophie, how Fairhurst Breen processed that, etc. At that point near the end, much of the book made sense as a way of setting readers up to understand the why and how of Sophie’s life and experience.

Either way, I enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to readers of emotional memoirs.

(thank you to NetGalley for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review)

hi friends. not sure how long this review will be, but i just wanted to preface it by saying this: i am not a large reader of non-fiction. in fact, i often refuse to read it. recently i have grown to love memoirs, especially after reading both Maya Angelou’s ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ and then this memoir. something that sets a memoir apart from any othernon-fiction for me is that everybody’s life is of a varying length, breadth of experience and depth of reflection. through reading memoirs, i have seen in greater depth how society is affected by certain issues, many of which are discussed in this book.

my rating: 5 stars
age: 13+, but would advise looking up triggers
(-drug use and overdose, -poverty, -mh and sh, -homophobia and misogyny, unhealthy parental relationships)
genres: non-fiction, memoir, lgbtqia+

pros: i greatly respected the author’s courage in sharing these aspects of her life. many difficult subjects were broached and with a great depth of understanding and calmness. the aithor’s writing style is perfect for the genre and for the subjects covered, and as a reader it was so compelling to read and definitely taught me a lot.

cons: i definitely would recommend looking up trogger warnings for this book, as it covers many mature and troubling topics. there was also a fair amount of skipping forwards and backwards chronologically which was confusing at times, but i did understand the necessity for it.

overall, i would recommend this book to pretty much everyone. it was an educating and insightful read, and i definitely would advise branching into memoirs if you are a fan of contemporary fiction, such as ‘A Very Large Expanse of Sea’ by Tahereh Mafi. definitely a favourite of this year’s reads.

In Any Kind of Luck at All we meet Mary Fairhurst Breen who has thrown back the curtains to give us an honest view of life growing up in the 70's with a less than picture perfect family. She was surrounded with generations of mental illness, drug abuse, alcoholism and bad tempers. Breen marries young and starts a family and we see the rise and fall of the consequences of that decision in her world.

This portrait is honest and raw, like a tear soaked pillow followed by a blast of dance mix music. She's been through a lot yet somehow remains mostly positive and spins her tale in to one of warning mixed with disco balls and a good sense of humor. Showing the bad as well as the good is part of what makes this story so incredible.

At times it becomes a bit hard to follow as it is not written in a linear fashion and she jumps forward, backward ad sometimes seemingly sideways thorough the years and events in her life. I have to be honest at times this can get a tad annoying as it makes it a little harder to follow; that being said I feel as though it makes the narrative all that much more real. How often when telling a story do you get ahead of yourself? Then something being said sparks a memory from long ago that you just have to mention before continuing on where you were; comparable to late night conversations with your best friend and drawing on the connection and heart swelling love of your this imperfect world. It's messy, it's raw, its the full truth and for that I applaud Mary Fairhurst Breen and her strength in every thing she's done, including writing this book.

Overall I'd give it 3.5 stars. If the writing was a bit more linear it'd be an easy 4.5 in my opinion. Either way its one you don't want to miss it'll have you feeling normal amongst the crazy of family friends and the past year an a half.

Thank you to netgalley, publishers and of course Mary Fairhurst Breen for the advanced e-copy for me to read and write my honest unfiltered review. These thoughts are mine and come from my heart so hopefully you'll see why you should pick up this quirky little memoir as soon as possible. It takes courage and soul to pour yourself on to the page like this and put it out there for the world to see. Help me give the respect it deserves by picking up your copy and hearing what Breen has to say.

This memoir of a woman's marriage, family, and her subsequent coming out is all over the place. The story is not linear. She jumps over decades and then goes back to refer to anecdote from previous years. Jumpy read.