Use Me chapter saved this book 
I had this book on my Wish list for months and finally found it at the public library. I read it last week and was glad that it was a library read and not a purchase or gift. The book was mediocre at times and the stories varied in terms of the quality of the narration and writing.
The "Use Me" short story was by far the most compelling piece in the collection. I was left breathless at the end of that story and I wished that the rest of the stories were as powerful.
Use Me by Elissa Schappell
The book is very well written, with excellent, well observed descriptions of places, people and events. The first few stories were absorbing and they drew you into the book, but after a short time, the main character, Evie, became tiresome because of her complete self absorption. The death of a parent is always a traumatic event, but Evie's total disintegration in the face of her father's illness and death became less about him and all about her. She was self destructive, and took out her pain and fear on all around her- her husband, her children and herself.Evie expresses her feelings with clever remarks and wiseguy comments, which give the book a light and amusing tone. However, her self pity and inability to accept the inevitable is incompatible with the writing, so in the end, instead of sympathy and understanding, the reader is left feeling annoyed and dismayed.
Use Me
In Use Me by Elissa Schappel a young is verry confused about her life and is wondering where to go and what to turn to in life. She and her father especially have a very close bond, probably because her father has cancer and she is not sure how much longer he is going to live. She trys and create a perfect image of herself for him and she wants him to remember her a a perfectect girl/daughter. With her mother she is always disagreeing and they are always fighting over one thing as another. In order to try and keep her father around she gets pregnant hoping that a baby will want him to try and hold onto life a little harder for the babies sake. All of these plans eventually don't work and he ends up dying. This then brings her and her mother alot closer because they are the only two people that are really feeling the true pain of her fathers death.
reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
The exquisitely artful fiction debut of Vanity Fair columnist Elissa Schappell is a novel told in ten stories that resonate with the most profound experiences in the life of a young woman -- friendship and rivalry, the love for a man, the birth of a child, and the death of a father.
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based on 32 reviews
