Men Have Called Her Crazy is a fascinating memoir about Tendler's time spent in a psychiatric hospital and the complicated relationships she has with the people around her. The first section of the book alternates between her stay in the hospital and her reflections on her relationships with men and how they have caused her harm. The memoir obviously covers a number of heavy topics, mostly relating to mental health, childhood trauma, and self harm. One issue for me is that everything is treated in an almost clinical way. It felt like everything was being looked at under a microscope and for a book that involves a lot of feelings, I didn't actually feel them all that much. Another issue that I had was the way that her marriage was treated in this memoir. I understand that there are a number of reasons why she might not want to write about her marriage and divorce, but in a book that is about her romantic relationships with men, it felt like a rather significant relationship was being left out. That being said, Tendler is a wonderful writer and obviously very self aware and analytical of herself, which I think is an admirable quality. Should she publish anymore work, I would certainly love to read it.

DNFd at 8%.

I was expecting something different with the memoir and found the talk of weight and how young she looked bc she was so small uncomfortable.

*Thank you netgalley and Simon & Schuster for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This just wasn’t for me. And I hate to critique a memoir so I’ll just leave it at that. I really liked her photos and thought I might enjoy this but it felt overly indulgent and the pacing of the writing was weird at times

Any woman who has been told she was “too much” or that she was overreacting will find something to identify with in this memoir. Anna Marie Tendler is an artist who came to the public eye when she was married to a famous comedian, who then very publicly divorced Tendler and got together with a Hollywood actress. While this memoir dives deep into several relationships with men and various levels of damage and accountability, it conspicuously leaves a hole in regard to her marriage. Women who have been in tumultuous relationships will want to reread and highlight and buy copies of this to give to friends, and it’s just not meant for other audiences (likely the men on the other side of those relationships). (Recommendation will be sent to email subscribers of WordSmarts.com)

There were so many hyper-specific experiences that Anna relayed here that mirrored my own, and it's always a gift to be seen in that way. I've seen other reviewers point out how flawed this book is, and I don't disagree, but I found a lot of value in it and still considered it worthwhile. Anna is a beautiful writer, and though I didn't always agree with the conclusions she made, I would be interested in reading more from her in the future.

I'm a bit torn as to how to rate this one. Tendler writes very well and is able to immerse the reader in her lived experience. However, this memoir can be quite frustrating to read because of her often immature perspective, pretentiousness, and diagnosed neuroticism. Tendler seems to blame men in her life for her problems but also has relied on them financially for years to support her own life and creative endeavors.

Despite how much thinking (read: overthinking) she does, she doesn't seem to have a lot of self-awareness or take accountability for her life and actions. She blames misogyny and the patriarchy for any bad behavior from men and glosses over it when women act badly. I was irritated by her desire to wear every slight like a gaping wound.

There are some poignant moments, especially about connecting with women also in treatment and sections on her dog, Petunia. I do think she depicts her experiences very well and the effect of childhood and adult trauma on a highly sensitivity person.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

Starting this book, I thought I was going to really enjoy it. The writing is well done and beautiful in a way most celebrity memoirs are not (although going into this I did not know who Anna was, so was unaware she was a celebrity) and I found her recount of the psychiatric facility she was in to be oddly relatable for someone who has never been hospitalized in that capacity and full of the type of bonding and relationships that make being a woman feel more like a team sport. I also related to a lot of the flash backs of her earlier relationships and sexual encounters with men and felt the camaraderie of the female experience in these spaces. I also could relate to struggling with coming to term with the harms of an unhealed parent whom you love while also acknowledging all the ways in which they have made you feel loved and cared for. Life and relationships are complex like that and I understood her defensiveness in describing her mother while in reality a lot of her mental health struggle and coping mechanisms probably did stem from some of these earlier experiences. I felt like as the book progressed it became a little too entrenched in what felt like an attempt to justify a deeply rooted hatred for men, which, as a self proclaimed feminist myself, did not feel particularly constructive. I understand where she is coming from and agree with the importance of recognizing and working against internalized misogyny and gender based inequalities, especially in spaces such as healthcare and the expected gender roles in family dynamics and relationships, but at times this just felt more like a tirade against the male kind then anything else. I also was confused when I finished the book thinking I had missed parts because she talks about being married and divorced, but that is not mentioned really at all throughout the story. After googling it and realizing who she is and why those details were likely left out I understand why it’s missing, but it just felt confusing and kind of jarring to the storyline to go so in depth with such short lived romances and experiences with men and then leave out an entire marriage and divorce. Overall, I felt like there was a little bit of a lack of self reflection that I was expecting to see and I felt like I was missing an overarching element that would tie the story together for me. I did really feel in one of the final chapters about her dog and could relate all too well to that one as my dog recently passed away this summer and thought that part was very well written. I’m glad I read it and still enjoy the aspects of the shared female experience that this gave, but overall I was left feeling like there was something still missing. Thank you Simon and Schuster for the ARC!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

If you had told me when I found out this book was being released that I would end up giving it 2 stars, I would have laughed in your face. Now… what a huge disappointment. Sometimes it’s really hard to write a negative review about something as personal as a memoir. However, when the title of the story does not meet its intended description and much of the content left me with a sour taste in my mouth, it’s difficult to ignore these glaring issues.

The first several chapters of the book are quite engaging, giving the readers an insight into AMT’s struggle with mental health and her early days in an inpatient hospital. However, it is very clear from the get go and throughout the rest of the story post inpatient stay that AMT doesn’t really seam to grasp exactly why she found herself in the hospital in the first place. Anyone with mental health struggles might need several interventions, such as hospital stays, years of therapy, or medical intervention to truly start their healing process. However, when you couple this with the fact that AMT has had the privilege of years of care to this degree but has seemingly elected to fight it with all her might, she paints an incredibly harmful narrative that everything is a competition and nothing can be her fault as it comes to her mental health, trauma, and recovery, but rather the fault of every man that comes before or after her. Now I will be the first to acknowledge that some of her paragraphs and one liners about men and the patriarchy hit very close to home and honestly made me laugh at times. But when this translated more often to a very toxic presentation of white feminism, it can really rub a reader the wrong way.

In my opinion, a memoir typically has to end in some kind of “lesson learned”: a chapter or so dedicated to what the writer has gained from their experiences. However, it felt to me that AMT never really learned those lessons. AMT, to the very end, pushes all of her problems and responsibilities onto the men in her life and refuses to acknowledge the childhood trauma she experienced, especially that from her mother, and how being very closed minded about certain things kept from from healing on her own terms, in a way that she needed very early on in her life.

Interestingly too, for a book supposed to be bringing attention to the influences of men and the patriarchy in her life, to not acknowledge whatsoever, any detail about her relationship with her very well known ex-husband just left the book feeling flat. On the one hand, I do understand the power move in leaving out any information about that relationship, especially considering how public it was because of her ex-husband’s career. However, knowing that he was at least a large part of her initial influence to self admit to an inpatient care facility, it almost feels disingenuous to the story she was trying to tell to exclude him almost entirely.

I do think that the sections dedicated to her inpatient stay and how the women there effected her, her experience with IVF, and the death of her dog, Petunia, had some really great elements and kept the book from feeling completely one dimensional. However, the way that AMT (potentially inadvertently because of her diagnosis and overall lack of specific treatment for it) preaches a very harmful rhetoric in her story makes these bright patches hard to acknowledge higher these glaring red flags present throughout. AMT says that her ultimate wish for herself is to one day reach a place where she can face hardship without trying to destroy herself. Unfortunately, though there is some insight to be gleaned by the end, I think AMT has a long way to come. However, I genuinely hope she can get there one day.

There are a slew of recent books on divorce and abuse paradigms, including Leslie Jamison’s “Splinters,” Miranda July’s “All Fours,” and Sarah Manguso’s “Liars.” Multimedia artist Anna Marie Tendler also has a problem with men claiming that she has “a sort of photographic memory for the ways men have asserted their power over me, the ways they have treated me poorly, and the ways I have fought to be equal or conversely sublimated myself to keep peace.” Tendler’s issues with men are significant enough that when she voluntarily checked herself into an inpatient psychiatric facility in 2021 at the recommendation of her therapist, she requests that she be housed with women only despite the fact that such segregated housing was intended for recovering addicts. Tendler, however, suffered from depression, self-harm (cutting which began in her teens), and disordered eating.

Tendler explains that she had stopped cutting for over a decade, but immediately before she checked into the psychiatric hospital, she is cutting with more frequency than at any point in her life, blaming her destructive behavior on a failing marriage. “My marriage was falling apart, and the more I tried to hold on, the faster it seemed to slip away.” She writes that “I thought I was losing my grip on reality. Thoughts of death and wanting to die consumed me.’

Tendler details the two weeks she spent at a psychiatric hospital. The chapters about her time at the hospital are interspersed with chapters about her relationships with former boyfriends who betrayed her in subtle but significant ways – from high school beaus who did not reciprocate her affection, to the 29-year-old musician to whom she lost her virginity at 17, to the tone deaf millionaire tech bro she took up with when she was working as an $8-an-hour shampoo girl at a hair salon who did not consider how their financial disparity made Tendler feel insubordinate to his power.

Tendler writes with a breezy, conversational tone about serious topics, but the memoir omits what would seem to be significant facts about the men who were the source of her trauma. Tendler says almost nothing about her marriage to the comedian John Mulaney who had checked himself into rehab for addiction in late 2020 and then, according to a statement issued by Tendler in May 2021, “decided to end our marriage.” Within weeks, Mulaney was linked to the actor Olivia Munn with whom he had a child and then married. Tendler concedes that her financial situation “has always been precarious,” and made stable only by her romantic partners. She does not explain how she is able to afford a swank psychiatric hospital that offers its patients yoga, horticulture therapy, jewelry making, movement therapy, meditation, acupuncture and massages, nor does she disclose how, when she was discharged she is able to afford such frivolous expenses as consultations with an animal communicator to better understand her dog when Tendler was making lampshades.

Tendler has written an intimate and courageous book that holds the reader’s interest, but she omits what must be central to her rage at men — her breakup with Mulaney. I would guess that Mulaney has provided financial support in consideration of which Tendler has signed a non-disclosure agreement. Regardless, you cannot finish Tendler’s memoir without wishing her well. Thank you Simon & Schuster and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this raw memoir.

This book is a well written memoir but I think it is more cathartic for the writer than the reader. It covers the same territory as other women’s mental health memoirs without offering much new

Anna Marie Tendler and her photographs were very interesting to me in the aftermath of her and John Mulaney's divorce. She was an enigma-obviously going through something painful and creating art out of it. Lucky for photographs and visual art, you bring your own perspective and narrative to your viewing, and you make up a whole story or whole personality in your head. Unfortunately, with the biographical written word, there is no enigmatic narrative. The author straight up tells you what they are like, and your imagination as to what the author is like is no longer imagination, and is absolutely upended.

Was it well-written? I think so. Was it interesting? Sometimes. Was it necessary? I'm not sure. Was the author ready to tell her story? My own personal opinion: no.

In "Men Have Called Her Crazy," Tendler describes her time checking herself into a mental health facility and the time there and following, interspersing vignettes of her life growing up in relation to men. And at times she claims to hate being around men, doesn't want to see them, doesn't want to be doctored by them. And yet these feelings are belittled by her absolute obsession with men, how they interact with her, how attractive they are, etc. Multiple times, she describes men by how attractive they are. If the only instance of this had been the hot firefighter story, I would have glossed over it because that's a little stereotypical jokey joke. It was with nearly every man mentioned.

At the very end, Tendler gives about 5 or so pages to her actual psychological results from her stay at the mental health hospital facility. (And she only opens the results two years after she received them.) In them are some reviews about herself that she simply doesn't agree with, and it doesn't seem as if she cares to try to pursue help for the diagnoses given. She is so bitter about these results, two years after the fact, two years after when she should have used them to get herself continued help. Seeing this bitterness colors the rest of the story-you can tell that Tendler is angry, bitter, and hasn't done as much self-work as she purports. She needed more time before she told this story-more time to heal. In a creative essay writing class in college, my instructor told us to not write about things that were too recent, as bitterness would seep into our tone, and instead of a well-thought-out story, our biases and bitterness would show. Now I see that clearly in this book.

One other note that just kinda gets my goat is that rarely, if ever, does Tendler acknowledge her privilege. She talks about not having a lot of money, but then is able to go into mental health facilities, move cross-country multiple times, etc. Though I understand some of this was from less-than-ideal circumstances, she never seems to have much introspection on this. I felt at times that she was purposefully excluding some things. That might be my own bias though!

Another, final note-she mentions John Mulaney briefly, never by name, and only in passing. A totally acceptable choice, and plenty of people were hoping to see more about their relationship, which we are not owed. However, given the rest of the stories in the book, it is a very surprising and odd choice to not include him more. I find this interesting.

In conclusion, I wish I would have only witnessed Tendler's visual art.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for the e-ARC!

thank you for this arc, I don’t give star ratings as I do for fiction books on non-fiction books as I don’t think it’s my place to rate someone’s lived experience. however, I deeply appreciate the raw and vulnerable way putting such a story out in the world and therefore give 5 stars for the mere fact Tendler is willing to share her experiences with the world.

I am touched to read this depiction of mental health, physical health, external and internal influences on well-being, and just how intricate our bodies react to different experiences.

I appreciate this book so much for the vulnerability, strength, courage, and creativity it depicts of Tendler, as well as the feelings her life story will impart on readers.


thank you for the arc :)

While the writing was good technically I really did not enjoy this memoir at all. There is no enjoyment about reading about someone who is so vapid and entitled. The whole book revolves around a woman’s hatred of men yet revolves her whole life around them and yet takes no responsibility for one’s self.

I think many people will go into this memoir expecting some sort of John Mulaney expose. They will be disappointed. Not only does Tendler never even say his name, she doesn’t really discuss their marriage at all.

Men have called her crazy opens with Tendler voluntarily checking herself into a behavioral health in patient ward for self-harm and suicidal ideation. From there, the book oscillates between her experience there and various moments from her life that illuminate the experiences and emotional responses that brought her to this moment. We see Amanda grow up and navigate relationships — with her family, with men, and with herself.

I'm not thrilled about the way mental health was portrayed in this. I'm a huge fan of feminist lit but this really missed the mark for me.

Anna Marie Tendler’s Men Have Called Her Crazy was a disappointing read. It begins well enough with Tendler’s decision to check in to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation after experiencing suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression, and self-harm. She is in the process of going through a divorce, which appears to have exacerbated her condition. The memoir then alternates between her experiences at the hospital, and her personal history with her family and men.

The chapters dealing with her hospitalization and subsequent outpatient treatment are interesting, and the chapter about her dog Petunia is perhaps the best in the book. However, the wheels fall off the cart in the chapters involving the men in her life. While I understand that Tendler does not want her memoir to be all about her famous ex-husband, the fact that her marriage is only mentioned in passing makes it hard to fully understand her mental crisis, or her self-described hatred of men in general and the patriarchy.

With few exceptions, the patriarchy is not solely responsible for Tendler’s relationships with emotionally unavailable men. It is also hard to take her seriously about hating men as a group given her financial dependence on wealthy men. Her extremism in this regard is especially tone deaf to the lives of working women everywhere, particularly women of color, who experience far worse everyday.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a complimentary advanced copy of this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for gifting me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

What an absolute privilege it was to read this book, and to read it prior to its release. I feel so much warmth and tenderness for Anna Marie Tendler after reading her book, even more than I did before I picked it up.

I loved how she framed her life in two main segments: her experiences in the psychiatric facility and her experiences across her life where men have impacted her.

I love so much the she chose to include in her memoir, from relationship dynamics that are (unfortunately) extremely common for women dating men, to the women in her life that have loved (or hated) and shaped her. I love that she shared her negative experiences with men across the stages of her life, and how real and close her experiences felt to ones myself and friends have lived.

I love even more the things she left out - mainly her relationship with and divorce from her ex-husband. I think most readers will expect a scathing tell-all, but she tells her story outside of their relationship in a way that tells the point of the memoir: AMT tells her story, free from being tethered to the one man most people try to contextualize her life around.

This memoir had me cringing, laughing, smiling, crying, gasping, sobbing, and feeling so much love for her and the women in my life. I am so grateful that Anna chose to share her vulnerability with us in such a brave, open, and honest way.

Armed with levity and an unflinching gaze at our culture and herself, Tendler has written a memoir that will challenge and engage readers.

This memoir was provided by the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.

“My wish for myself is that one day I’ll reach a place where I can face hardship—because I fear the worst is still to come—without trying to destroy myself.”

I am at 82% and I just can’t even force myself to finish this book. I hate to do this with memoirs because they are so personal but oomph. I just cannot keep going so I can read about how she loathes all men and men are the reason for all of her problems. Do men and women BOTH have issues?! Yes of course. But this is sounding very much like a her problem with very little accountability or acknowledgment of the ramifications of her actions. Just not at all for me.

Thank you to Netaglley, Simon & Schuster, and the author for the ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts.

I didn’t know who Tendler was until I Googled her name and found out her ex-husband is famous, and her divorce was highly publicized. By then, I had read the part where she said to a therapist that there were three members of her family: her, her husband, and her dog. I also read the part where Tendler had to move to Los Angeles due to her husband’s job. I thought she would mention her marriage experience later in the book; it never happened. In her memoir, a large portion of it explores Tendler’s romantic relationships and the power dynamics within, leaving her marriage and divorce and how that affected her; it feels disingenuous.
I did appreciate her honesty when it came to her mental health issues. She was open about her struggles and why she admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital. In the last chapter of her book, she talks about how she had intensive DBT therapy and learned how to tolerate difficult, overwhelming emotions, have self-respect, and not live her life only to make someone else happy. If you are struggling with your mental health, I think this memoir will help you to feel motivated to make changes or take steps that will lead you toward self-improvement.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC.
#happilyaddictedtobooks #netgalley #simon&schuster #menhavecalledhercrazy #annamarietendler #memoir