How We Love is a memoir from childhood to age 41, by Clementine Ford, Australian feminist writer and broadcaster. It is a gender bending recounting of a troubled life, a tell-all, confusing recitation of vodka rattled romances, a divorce and intermittent angst.
Ford has made Twitter posts such as “All men must die” and “The coronavirus wasn’t killing men fast enough”. And yet, she has a following. The book received good reviews from some readers saying the openness and honesty was reassuring and gave hope. How We Love may help confused people understand that they are not alone in their emotional highs and lows. If this book helps a few people through a troubled journey, all well and good.
But why haven’t we moved on? Don’t most of us believe LGBTQers are reasonably well-balanced people, like people everywhere in an open accepting society such as Australia? This memoir just shouts that LGBTQers have little emotional stability. Is it fair to portray gays this way?
Jumping back and forth in time, we follow Clementine from the death of her mother. Then we go back in time to her difficult school days, followed by a series of jobs and eventually a string of lovers and marriage. The end then jumps back in time again with further descriptions of her toddler son. The writer agonises at length about the difficulties fitting in at school, the crushes on unattainable boys, the confusing friendships with girls, finally marriage to a man.
Then a few years into her marriage she decides she wants a child and gets pregnant by her husband. She suffers prenatal depression, doubting she wants a child any more. Then she resents the child once the reality of motherhood sinks in.
The couple divorce and Clementine searches for new men. One-night stands and drunken encounters are described in detail. The reader wonders who is taking care of the child? At the end, we learn that Clementine now has Jesse as a partner who, presumably, is the child’s carer as Clementine travels to speak about her controversial earlier book, Fight Like a Girl.
How We Love, Notes on A Life, by Clementine Ford
Published by Allen & Unwin, 2021
Reviewed by Carol Dance