I needed some time to think about how I felt about this memoir. On the one hand, I adore Anna Marie Tendler and was really interested in seeing how she speaks up for herself in light of all the media attention she got during and after her marriage/divorce with John Mulaney. On the other hand, I didn’t find this memoir to be that enrapturing. I saw one reviewer say that celebrity memoir tends to be either really interesting or is written in an engaging way that relates to the masses, and that this memoir didn’t fall into with of those categories - unfortunately, I agree. That isn’t to say that Tendler’s experiences have no merit or worth - they absolutely do! However, I didn’t find this to be something I wanted to engage with, nor did it give me much insight into Tendler’s personal growth after all she’s been through.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced copy.

i badly wanted to like this book — and at moments i really did! — but i found it mostly to tell, not show. i spent 300 pages reading tendler's voice and i feel like i learned about her in spite of her self-reflection, not through it.

Anna Marie Tendler is a wonderful writer. This is a beautiful memoir—thoughtful, empathetic, self-aware, funny at times, vulnerable. Tendler’s exploration of her own mental health and psychiatry more broadly is informative, and her desire to understand how her relationships have made her the person she is, how all of these events are connected, is so relatable. So many women will see themselves in this book. And not for nothing, I love that John Mulaney will not find his name in it. Get yours, girl.

This is exactly what I wanted. Anna Marie Tendler has such wonderfully cool writing voice. If she hadn't early on described her experience like Girl, Interrupted I would have still conjured up that. I deeply connected with her saying her relationships with older men in the past were consensual but as she thinks back it's definitely problematic.
RIP Petunia

I don't feel right reviewing a memoir anymore these days but I love how unapologetic Tendler is with sharing her story of mental health. I think everyone assumed her ex-husband would be talked about in this but he wasn't at all and I love that for her lol

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book!

I found this to be a really fascinating read. This book made me angry, it made me sad, it made me laugh, and it made me appreciative. I especially apprecaited Anna baring her soul in this book and allowing others to walk through her life experiences with her. It feels as though Anna is sharing a diary in this book.

This is a good book for women who have dealt with misogyny and mental health problems. This is not a self help book by any means, but I believe it could help others to feel seen and less alone. It helps to see someone else experience what you have gone through.

I will say, if you are going into this looking for a tell all on her marriage you will be disappointed; that is not the point of this book. But if you go into it expecting to connect with another woman over shared experiences and raw soul-bearing, you will be very satisfied.

I struggle to rate memoirs but if I had to I would give this around a 4.25.

(Thank you Netgalley for the arc)

I wanted to love this book but ultimately found it confusing and frustrating. There is no denying that she is an incredible writer and the first third of the book rang the strongest for me. She has faced intense trauma and her strength is powerful and palpable. I loved her relationship with the girls in the facility and her love for her dog. However framing this book as taking her power back from the John Mulaney situation but then mentioning every other bad male relationship except his just rang baffling and false. She tiptoes around her privilege and money mostly focusing on the time she didn’t have any and not exploring what it means now that she has money in a power dynamic. I didn’t need her to give us the nitty gritty details of her famous relationship, but I think it actually looms so much larger in absentia.

- Whew, this is A BOOK. I knew next to nothing about Tendler other than her highly publicized divorce, and now after reading MEN HAVE CALLED HER CRAZY, I feel a deep kinship with her.
- Tendler’s writing is a bit removed, but her prose flows so beautifully it took me awhile to clock it. It’s somehow both clinical and deeply insightful.
- She flips between present day at the hospital and looking back at past relationships. I would have liked a bit of a sharper line drawn between the past men and current mental state, but it is all there.
- PS: There’s virtually no mention of said ex-husband. It plays somewhere between “I signed an NDA” and “you don’t matter enough to include.” Plenty of Petunia though, which made me both laugh and cry.

This is one of the best, most interesting, well thought out memoirs I’ve read in a long time. There were so many parts that felt deeply relatable and others that were inspiring. Incredible work!

1.) Incredibly readable, but somehow not fully engaging for me. She did a great job describing the events, but there was little reflection until the final (brief) chapter.
2.) Pretty sure we learned sharing our height and weight stats were a bad idea on 2012 tumblr? A very odd choice for an eating disorder/mental health recovery book.
3.) I haven’t read this much gender essentialism since 2016.
4.) I thought the therapist’s insights and her responses about her mother were the most interesting part, but the author definitely did not and they got lost in the shuffle.
5.) Petunia :( :(
6.) We get it, you have small wrists.

2.5/5 stars

Thank you to the publisher, the author, and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A fantastic memoir. Anna is unapologetically honest about her mental health and inpatient experience, about loss and grief, love. A very emotional read!

I loved this. I related so much to the feelings in this book, both towards men and about myself. What a triumph of a memoir!

(Although, you won’t find juicy celebrity gossip here!)

This book is so good! It is well written but also heartbreaking to know what the author has experienced. I have been saying this often, but i would love to see this book dissected in a women’s studies class; there’s so much here. Thank you to the publisher for inviting me to read this book!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC. I was so excited to get my hands on this and get to know Tendler better.

Imagine your best friend's impossibly cool, mysterious, and creative older sister wrote a memoir, giving you a snapshot of her life and maybe a glimpsse into her unknown mental health struggles. You realize just how much you didn't know about her beyond the anecdotes that her husband regaled large audiences with or what you could glean from her art.

The book opens as Tendler, recognizing she's in crisis, checks herself into an in-patient mental facility. From there, it vacillates between her descriptions of day-to-day treatment at the facility and seminal moments and relationships that affected her life, her outlook, her personality.

I went into it knowing that it wasn't going to be about John Mulaney or her relationship with him. And, while I respect that none of us are owed the details of her marriage, it's the elephant in the room. It's hard to imagine that her marriage--the relationship that preceeded her stay in treatment, didn't have as profound an effect and wasn't worth mentioning. Maybe it was intentional. But, she's so honest about so much so it's noticeable that she's not willing to be honest with readers about that. Not that she's lying. She just omits it entirely save for a couple of vague references. I think about how honest she was about her mom and how painful that must have been to write, how painful it had to be for her mom to read. She's willing to be brutally honest about her mom and herself, but not her relationship with her ex-husband?
It creates this void in the book that's hard for the reader to overcome.

The ending doesn't exactly offer a resolution as she dissects the diagnoses and notes. Books don't have to follow a traditional arc to reach a resolution, and I think it's possible that someone completely unaware of her might pick this up and really appreciate such a personal account of mental health. A lot of people (who are aware of her and who she was formerly married to) are going to struggle with what she leaves out, though.

Wow. This book was simultaneously heartbreaking, cathartic, insightful, vindicating, and so much more.

I waited for the audiobook to release before doing my readthrough, and I'm glad I did because listening to Anna narrate this was an experience -- possibly one of the best reading experiences I've had to date.

Being a woman, or a person raised socialized as a woman, in a patriarchal world is unsafe and honestly maddening. We are conditioned to be quiet, to not take up space, to make others comfortable even to the detriment and harm of ourselves, we're taught to normalize our pain, to never be an inconvenience -- and it's so much worse for those of us who are queer and melanated. And sometimes it's not until we have some kind of mirror held to our faces in media like this that we can truly unpack the reality in which we live and the patterns and dynamics we fall into that uphold it. I'm thankful for the vulnerability that went into this, it was obviously a labor of love and I'm glad she was brave enough to share it with the world.

I loved her method of storytelling, intertwining stories of her past with her more contemporary experiences. And I know that many will likely complain about her memoir not focusing on her divorce, but those who will are completely missing The Point and are doing themselves a major disservice.

This is a book I will think about at least once a day for the rest of my life.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Men Have Called Her Crazy is a memoir that discusses the author's experience in a psychiatric hospital and reflects on moments in her life which lead to and resulted from this experience.

I always find it difficult to rate memoirs lower than a 5 stars, but I'm happy to say this one feels deeply deserving of a high rating. Tendler is open, honest, and vulnerable, and though her individual experience is not relatable to all, she ties much of her experience to the broader, more universal experiences of women in society, and the pressures and pitfalls we face. And, despite everything that she does go through, difficult and harmful as it was, Tendler ends the book on a hopeful and positive note. It is clear that this memoir was written very intentionally, painting a realistic and nuanced portrait of mental health without coming off as pessimistic or dark.

Also, props to Tendler for not mentioning Mulaney by name once. My favorite thing about this book is that there is a person here who is so, so much more than the men in her life would ever paint her to be.

Absolutely loved this memoir! Anna beautifully crafted this story focused on a period of her life, not all that long ago, surrounding her own mental health journey. The chapters switching between her younger years to now was so fluid. I love how direct she when talking about her mental health, and all of the realizations she came to throughout the journey.

I loved how Ms. Tendler told her story, and am so happy she had the courage and voice to do so. She was able to take back the narrative in an eloquent way.

Your mileage on this memoir is going to vary drastically depending on what your mindset is going into it. If you want to read a commentary on mental illness that tackles harsh topics like suicidal ideation self-harm and eating disorders while exploring the ways that men can shape a woman's mental health based on the way she was being perceived by them, then you will enjoy this book. If you want Anna's ruminations on how men have shaped her experiences and her thoughts on reckoning with this while going through treatment and dealing with depression, you'll enjoy this book. If you want an expose on her relationship with John Mulaney, you should just not even bother. The conversation around this memoir has irritated me immensely, because people are so wrapped up in wanting to know the drama and are not giving this book the respect it deserves as a memoir about a woman struggling to understand and unlearn the nonsense men have wrought upon her life and her headspace. This is an important read but you'll only get it if you come in with the right priorities.

Men Have Called Her Crazy begins with Anna Marie Tendler’s arrival at an inpatient psychiatric hospital. After five years with her therapist, the two have come to an impasse. By taking a more intensive approach to her mental health, Anna discovers her therapist’s evaluation of her intense suicidal ideation, self-harm, and disordered eating is much more nuanced than that.

Anna’s forthright manner makes the reader comfortable with the in-patient setting. She not only explains what goes on in the admittance process, for example, but why it’s necessary. After all, readers are curious! She describes what the daily structure is like and how patients interact within this bubble. So, it is not something terrifying like Girl, Interrupted nor a luxury detox rehab.

Anna arrives at the medical campus angry and distrustful of men following a failed marriage. She refuses to live in a co-ed dorm and eating meals with men makes her uncomfortable. Most of her doctors are men, however. As Anna correctly explains, the standard for modern psychology is based on straight, white, cis-gendered males. Using clinical testing techniques in a live-in setting—and most importantly, explaining their conclusions to Anna—the doctors help Anna start to rebuild her foundation. And while her experience is generally positive, it’s a harsh reminder of how doctors—and men in general—oversimplify the complexities that women present, often with little context.

Part of dealing with psychological issues is confronting the past. Anna weaves in scenes from her traumatic childhood, age-inappropriate exploits, artistic endeavors and failures, lavish parties with a condescending millionaire, and hanging around Hollywood sets. Men are featured as vignettes that explain her psyche, while her nameless ex-husband hovers in the book’s shadows.

By writing her memoir, Anna regains her own power. Throughout it all, she relies on the strengths of her female friendships and the love for her dog Petunia. She chooses the narrative—instead of letting the tabloids do it.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the ARC.