How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell

TV shows like Keeping Up with the Kardashians and the Real Housewives series give us insight into the fabulous lives of the rich and famous. Glamour perverts of the world, like me, enjoy peeking at these lives through a cracked door, a safe distance away. Beauty Editor Cat Marnell’s memoir, How to Murder Your Life, however, slams that door open, drags your ass in, pops an Adderall, and says, “buckle the fuck up.”

She edits out nothing and I am obsessed with it. Cat Marnell is hilariously self-aware stating from the very beginning, “If you are grossed out by ‘white girl privilege’ (who isn’t?), you might want to bail now." The story begins with her rich yet unfulfilled childhood, but really starts at her Gossip Girl-esque boarding school. Starting at the Lawrence Academy in Groton, Massachusetts, a destination acting as Laguna Beach’s cokehead older sister, Cat learns she can overcome her piss-poor academic record with copious amounts of Adderall.

After her expulsion from the academy, she interns for top fashion magazines in the industry before landing a job at Lucky as a beauty assistant. Fast forward multiple abortions, a full-fledged drug addition, and an eating disorder later, she finally lands a spot as the Beauty Editor of xoJane. It, contrary to everything else in the beauty industry, is not pretty.

By the time she gets to xoJane, Cat isn’t just off her rocker; she’s torn the rocker to pieces, thrown it into a fire, and danced around it with sheep’s blood on her forehead. If you need perspective, here’s a link to her snorting bath salts while at work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuOtcVpsANE&t=23s

So why do I love this so much? Even at points in the story where Cat hasn’t slept in days, the memoir has an electric energy. Addiction stories are usually dark, damp, and overwhelmingly serious. They are told with an image of Edgar Allen Poe sitting in a dark library moaning, “woe is me” with a pack of Marlboros.

But How to Murder Your Life is refreshingly realistic, funny, and charming. You both hate Cat for her life choices, and yet want to know everything about her. You finish the book and immediately spend three more hours Googling her name and watching her YouTube videos.

This, by no means, is a Pulitzer Prize winning piece of prose, but rather a literary version of an E True Hollywood Story. Something everyone needs on a Sunday to nurse their hangover.

The most interesting part of this memoir though, for me, is how little you want the life she has by the time you finish. It's a truly shocking perspective to finish the end of a Beauty Editor’s memoir and want nothing that she has. No amount of Kiehl’s face lotion makes up for a life without love, without health, and without balance. By the end, you aren’t yearning for some other glamorous life, but happy to be right where you are. With being common, comes comfort.