Men Have Called Her Crazy is Anna Marie Tendler’s catalogue of her life so far, centered around her experience with mental illness, the men who have entered and exited her life, and all of the emotions caught up in between.

This book goes out of its way to not be about one particular man I think many people will pick it up hoping it will be about. It’s a very pointed choice, and I think it does a very good job of quietly emphasizing the entire time that Tendler is her own person, just like we all are, and to assume the most important thing about someone, especially a woman, is the person they’re married to is deeply uncurious and dehumanizing.

Tendler can write. She’s unflinching and honest, while still having empathy for the person that she used to be. This book does at times feel like a very open stream of consciousness as Tendler looks back at periods in her past to understand how they contributed to her ten day stay at a psychiatric hospital, that stay being the center and framing device of the entire memoir.

I described this to my friend as a Woman’s Memoir and I do think it is one where many women will find some element of Tendler’s life deeply relatable. I found the way she talked about her mother’s presence in her life particularly moving. I think she does a really good job of explaining what it’s like to love someone who has undoubtedly hurt you but also being able to forgive them without causing yourself more pain and implementing boundaries.

This is a beautiful, moving piece of work and we are all so lucky that Tendler has decided to share it with us.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the eARC.

Absolutely beautiful writing and quite possibly the most relatable memoir I've read. This is being released at the perfect time in my life, so many of AMT's discussed struggles are things I'm currently working on myself and it was nice to read someone having the exact same thoughts. While I'm struggling to come up with words, this is a must read and possibly my favorite book of the year.

Men Have Called Her Crazy is an autobiography from Anna Marie Tendler. The book goes back and forth between present day and her teenage to early 20s. She goes into detail her struggles with anxiety, depression, cutting and thoughts of unaliving herself. As a woman of a similar age, I could relate to the struggles of dating, having to rely on a man and going back and forth with wanting to be a mother.

I enjoying hearing about her relationships she made while she was hospitalized in early 2021. I also enjoyed hearing about her dog, Petunia. I was a fan of her ex husband and would hear stories of Pentunia in his stand up act. If you are looking to her bashing her ex, or even talking about him, you won't. This book is about her.

She also went into detail about going through a round of IVF, I has no idea it was so involved.

I read this book pretty quickly, within 3 days. I recommend this book to anyone struggling with mental illness, IVF and the horrors of dating in your 30s.

The writing in this book was much better than I anticipated. I was pleasantly surprised. As someone who has struggled with mental health I related to the content and appreciated the candor. I love the title, it reminded me of how even in 2024 we are fighting against the “crazy” woman trope and Tendler’s experience brings into focus the way that this world can make you feel crazy. I would definitely recommend this memoir to others. It may be triggering for some and recommend a content warning.

Anna enters a psychiatric hospital for a short stay after severe suicidal ideation, anxiety, and depression (this was during the pandemic, but her symptoms made the rest of our anxiety look quaint). She’d been a cutter on and off since she was young. She agrees to go through a barrage of tests and therapy, in addition to the therapy she’s been going to for several years.

Her story is nothing like mine, but I highlighted a lot of things I found interesting. She has a lot of insights. And a lot of anger toward men. She mentions she’s going through a divorce, but as I was reading it, I was waiting for her to go into more detail. I hadn’t read any reviews before I read the book. Now I’ve read the reviews and thought, “oh, that’s why she barely mentions it.” But divorce is something that can make those of us who aren’t cutters with suicidal ideation extremely depressed, so I still feel like it was an important part of the story that was really glossed over in this memoir. I’m not sure how she could have written it differently, but it seemed important to address it in some way. She’s very honest about other really difficult experiences she faced.

She doesn’t want anything to do with men so the house she goes to is all women (there are several different houses at this facility), but the other women are addicts, and she isn’t. Almost all of her doctors there are male, and she has this weird falling out with her female therapist that she’d been seeing for several years. At the very end, she says she doesn’t hate men, but you’d never guess it from everything that went before. I’m also a feminist, but I guess her experiences shaped her attitude differently than mine.
NetGalley provided an advance copy of this book, which RELEASES AUGUST 13, 2024.

Author Anna Marie Tendler parlays a short psychiatric hospital stay into a tedious memoir in Men Have Called Her Crazy.

Except for their sexual function, Tendler doesn't like men and blames her doctors, dates, and other males of acquaintance for the systemic oppressions of the patriarchy, which enrage her and make her feel "big emotions." It doesn't occur to her as someone whose life is clearly not working, that maybe she is not in fact right about everything. There's a lot of projection and humblebragging as well.

For a short book, this took a long time to get through. Passable at best.

Thank you NetGalley, Simon & Schuster, and Anna Marie Tendler for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! I’ve been a fan of Tendler’s for a long time and was super excited to get approved for this one. It’s raw, brutally honest, and inspiring, and I’m glad to have read it.

This book follows her struggles with mental health and her stay in a psychiatric hospital a few years ago. She goes back and forth between the past and her stay and discusses experiences she’s had and how they’ve impacted her life. I really enjoyed her discussion of treatment and all of the people she met while there.

I highly recommend this one! 4 stars :)

Incredibly immersive writing. Left the book feeling like I knew the author intimately as a friend. The structure really worked for me and I appreciated the alternating lens of AMT's stay at the center coupled with key moments with questionable men throughout the course of her life. Also, it was laugh out loud funny at points, striking a great balance considering the largely heavy, serious themes. A very strong memoir that I've been recommending to friends and other writers.

Feminine rage, a dog, mental health issues-this book has it all and is very well written. I’m also extremely glad she didn’t make this book all about her ex husband because I was wondering she she would and that’s a total power move to barely mention him.

i can't wait for people who think they'll get john mulaney tea through this book and that's the only reason they're picking it up to just be blown away by tendler's impeccable, beautiful prose and sheer resilience she demonstrates in the stories she tells. she's A STAR and i hope this isn't her last book

Pros: All I “knew” about the author before reading this book was what I heard as celebrity gossip, so I was interested to learn about the author, in her own words. I found this book to be an honest and fascinating recollection of a woman’s mental health journey, including time in a psychiatric hospital and reflecting on life events that influenced and demonstrated her mental health struggles. I think a lot of readers, especially women, will find the author to be relatable and/or to remind them of a friend who has needed support through mental health struggles.

Cons: This is not at all a con of the book but a note that some readers will likely be disappointed when they read it wanting to hear details about the author’s ex-husband and find that he and their relationship are not the subject of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read this book.

SimonBooks graciously granted me Netgalley access to a @annamtendler’s upcoming memoir. Men Have Called Her Crazy. (Out August 13, 2024).

Men Have Called Her Crazy is an exploration of Tendler’s ongoing reckoning with patriarchal harm. To better calibrate her mental health, Tendler enrolls in inpatient therapy. She gives nuanced accounts of the active, workaday nature of therapy. Tendler demonstrates how quickly people can settle into the daunting tasks and examinations that await them, how they can build camaraderie and utilize diagnostic strategies. The book does not exhaustively cover every relationship and therapeutic unpacking, but the details Tendler does share are substantial.

Tendler gives meaningful attention to the gestures of support and love she receives from her close female friends, her beloved dog, and her fellow patient comrades. Supportive actions also come from some of the people who have harmed and dismissed her.

During those recollections of men (and others) harming her – emotionally, physically, mentally and sometimes sexually- Tendler channels informed retrospect to show the ways in which experiences and relationships can reveal themselves to have always been fucked up. Frank depictions of self-harm, emotional abuse, disordered eating, sexual misconduct, parental neglect, and suicidal intent are present.

Tendler also vigorously interrogates her own actions; some of her conclusions will resonate, some decisions may confound, but to witness an active mind – a person in progress – is the gift of memoir.

Many multifaceted experiences abound; Funny moments, moments of confusion, and moments of artistic exhilaration – spanning the nascent Instant Messaging Age to the present. Tendler is distinct in her generational trappings, and particular talents.

Men Have Called Her Crazy delivers clarity and an audacious curiosity. I can’t wait to listen to the author-read audiobook on August 13, 2024!

Beautifully written and inspiring. I tore through this memoir in under 24 hours, it is gripping, heartbreaking, intense and powerful. Anna Marie Tendler offers us an inside glimpse to her mental struggles and her experiences while recovering in a mental hospital. This is raw and honest and heartfelt and as real as it gets. There is so much that is relatable, in her story, for all women. Thank you Netgalley, Simon and Schuster and the author for this eARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be available for purchase on August 13, 2024

What a beautiful, beautiful memoir. I went into this not knowing who Anna Tendler was, and I had zero idea that she had been married to John Mulaney. She never mentions him by name, and I felt like she was pretty respective of him.

But her documenting her journey with men and her own struggles with mental health-- absolutely gorgeous. She does not hold back, and honestly sections of this book I think will hit certain women very hard. Especially her being young being interested in older men. That hit me, personally, close to home. Truthfully, there was several parts in this where I was mentally going "me too" and I think MANY female readers will relate.

I am so glad that I got the opportunity to read "Men Have Called Her Crazy" and I wanted to thank NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for a copy! It's expected to be published on August 13th. I think this is going to be a hit when it's released!

I cried

I sometimes imagine a world where I could line up the times, whilst in bed at night, when I have decided to act that days' tomorrow as if nothing was wrong with me, planned my life out in my head the night before, only to then wake up the next morning and quickly realize I am still just as angry and terrified as the day before, and those late night thoughts and plans were simply a dream that came before my sleep; Wish I could line up these repeated and collectible hopeful turned hopeless anomalous plans made in the dark of night like beautiful seashells on a windowsill, where the sunlight could shine in and show how irrational they actually are in the brightness of day, having tricked me in the darkness. The darkness convinced me the seashells, though broken, looked whole, prompting me to pick them up, only for them to pop out of the sand half broken and weighed down with dusty debris, their perceived wholeness like a broken promise, just like my belief, in myself someday being able to be anything other than what I've been, always proves to be. A promise between the holder and the beholder: "I thought maybe I found in myself and in something else a fullness worth celebrating. A wholeness that in the light of day proves to be real." Maybe the darkness isn't as scary as the light when you don't want a spotlight shining upon the broken pieces. But still we have to carry with us these broken pieces, they become so undeniably our own.

In Men Have Called Her Crazy, Tendler documents the ways in which a life she had decided upon for herself unfortunately broke apart like a fragile sand dollar, revealing that the inside was full of holes and loose pieces.
Tendler explores moments of her life when she was ostensibly whole, the times she pretend to be whole, and the times in which she bravely admitted to herself and others that she was incredibly broken. In 2021, Anna checked herself into a psychiatric hospital, despair having taken over, in a time when many of us also felt this way, mid-pandemic, alone and constantly enduring an experience we never fathomed we would be in, even more traumatizing than we could anticipate. Mental illness hit a suffocating high at this time, not enough therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. to go around, barely enough belief in ourselves of our own capability of getting out of this suffocating funk to feel well enough to even seek these resources.
Tendler had the courage and just enough will to persevere in order to go on to source these mental health resources for herself, and this book that is dedicated to her journey with her mental illness, from her adolescence to now, is truly priceless and utterly vulnerable, and for some of us, like a foggy but discernible look into a mirror very possibly reflective of our own grief, depression; anxiety, and anger.

Those of us who live our lives primarily alone inevitably also imagine dying alone, unseen, misunderstood, but there are ways we can record these mental and physical states we pass through, whether written by ourselves or therapists and doctors, their input valuable even if not working as a panacea as we all wish these appointments and commitments would, imagining a world where these appointments or willing or unwilling committings to a facility could be a brief one time thing.
Aside from her innate disposition towards mental illness, Tendler also translates the ways in which multiple men have made her feel less than autonomous, deeply angry, and increasingly hopeless, and the tolerance she no longer has towards men and their presence, a personally necessary imposed distance men inevitably consider unfathomable: they wrongly think a woman must be crazy to hate men that much. If we are arriving at a state of being considered crazy, who do they think is driving us there? It's a tale as old as time, and an experience for women as heavy and persistent as Sisyphus' rock.
After having read a whole book in which she cultivates all of the reasons men have called her crazy, and the ways in which they have made her feel that way about herself, I, and I'm sure any other woman, would call her valid.
Extremely valid and incredibly sane, at least as sane as we all are.

I was surprised to have been offered this book for review but I did really enjoy the way that it was told. I was excited to be offered to read and I had a really good time reading it.

I am glad Tendler was able to write this. It seems it helped her personally.

As a reader, I was bored.

Thanks to Netagalley for the advance copy.

•Anna Marie Tendler recalls her psych hospital stay along with pivotal moments in her life that have lead her there- many of them impacted by men.

Ladies: here is our Bible. Our Roman Empire. Simply the most incredible memoir I have ever read. I have never related to someone’s life story more. Down to her being a mens hair stylist briefly, I felt I was reading my own story. This is so heavy and touches base on so many topics- down to the powerful feeling you get when being the Lolita, so much psychology, things we as women have all thought but never said out loud and so much more. This is why we choose the bear. This shook me to my very core. There is nothing I love more than a memoir written by an angry woman, who is finally speaking her truth. Thank you so much, Anna Marie Tendler for pouring your heart out onto these pages- I have never felt more powerful, validated or heard. Thank you.

I am woman hear me fucking roar.

I went into this book completely ready to hate on men, but then I realized that the men don't even matter because it was about Anna. And I wanted to cheer her on from the sidelines. I resonated with Anna's story and the way she looks at life. It is hard to be self-aware of one's mental health, but seeing no alternative to actually help yourself. I think the best way to describe the book is quietly powerful. As an introvert myself, I completely understood where Anna is coming from. It's very easy to get suck in one's head, but I will continue looking up this made me think to look for others too who are self-aware of their problems, but just need someone to cheer from the sidelines. Thank you for letting me read this,

I didn’t know much about Anna Tendler besides what the media showed- I’m so happy the have picked up this arc. An incredible memoir about a woman with so much more to her than her marriage, ANNA YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS