"My Misspent Youth"

"My Misspent Youth"
Meghan Daum
Open City Books, $14





After painfully pulling myself through "The Quality of Life Report," I wasn't sure if I would ever want to read Meghan Daum again.

But I was pleasantly surprised throughout "My Misspent Youth" and have decided Daum is much more suited for writing nonfictional essays about the fortunes and misfortunes she has experienced than fictional novels about what she might wish to experience.

"Youth" is a collection of Daum's essays that have previously appeared in other publications, such as The New Yorker, GQ and Harper's. They are blunt. They are true.

Daum's writing is fresh. She is writing about herself and personal experiences without drowning the reader in first person pronouns.

She incorporates today's society, its expectations and how a twentysomething would conform in her writings. She discovers the ups and downs of finding love online in "On The Fringes Of The Physical World." She confesses her form of snobbiness through not being able to take a great deal of an apartment because of its one flaw in "Carpet Is Mungers." She searches for a definition of love and belonging in "According To The Women I'm Fairly Pretty."

The stories she tells don't always end, but she finds a way to finish telling them. The style allows readers to think about these ideas in their own lives, to fill in the spaces Daum has left. I could find myself in the stories she told — losing a relationship when the way to communicate changes; allowing disappointment with your bank account in order to be pleased with your everyday life; denying yourself love because someone can't fit the exact criteria of what you have planned in your life; falling in love where it will never work because of cultural expectations; finding success in something you always wanted but never did; dealing with grief when you're not sure if you're grieving.

The best stories are the stories that aren't just stories because they go beyond the realm of what is considered to be a story. They're the stories that are real. They're the stories that make you see, feel, believe. They're the stories you could see yourself writing, if you had the talent of Daum.