Reviews for Devil, the Lovers, and Me: My Life in Tarot

The average rating for Devil, the Lovers, and Me: My Life in Tarot based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-02-09 00:00:00 Darshna Dave I picked this book up on a whim. I happened to be perusing the tarot section of my local library when I saw this book. I don't know why it wasn't with the memoirs, but the concept intrigued me. I was disappointed. The concept itself of relating each of the events in the author's life back to cards in a tarot spread was actually really clever to me. I've never seen it done before, and I thought it was done well. The author really seemed to get the cards, but that makes sense considering how she mentions in the acknowledgements how she's been seeing readers for years as well as dabbling herself for some time. However, it is annoying to learn she knows so much from experience with the cards but portrayed herself as someone completely new to the concept in the fictionalized portions that comprised the reading session. This book is meant to be as true as possible, but she painted herself as someone totally new to Tarot who was disrespectful on purpose. I don't understand why. The writing itself was simple, easy to read. It was a fast read, too. Some word choices were jarring and not great. A little bit of this book was relatable, but some things were bad enough that I know I'd never want to meet this author or know her in real life. Aurbach comes across as someone with severe internalized misogyny issues to the point where I was surprised she had female friends at all. She kind of addresses it as a jealousy issue and as part of her insecurities, but she doesn't really ever address it in a way that shows she's truly healing and moving on from it. I guess the scene where she meets her boyfriend's ex is supposed to represent that, but it felt like a very individualistic thing that only related to her jealousy and not her internalized hatred for her own sex. Second thing I didn't like... There's so much casual racism in this book that it actually becomes quite overt. Anyone who doesn't speak English is shown speaking in ways that white people use to mock those languages. She goes to various countries and never even tries to communicate with the people who actually live there, just the tourists visiting from other countries who speak English, even when her goal is to learn about the culture of the country's citizens. She never examines why everything about other countries seems to disgust her so much. She just paints foreigners and foreign cultures as bad compared to what she's used to. It wouldn't have been so bad that she'd done and felt these things at the time that they had happened if the narration didn't support her feelings back then as still holding true at the time she wrote it. I pushed through because I have a reading goal, but I'd never recommend this book to anyone. I probably should have DNFed.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-07-15 00:00:00 Luiz Goes I didn't totally hate this book, but when it was due at the library and I hadn't finished it, I had no problem returning it without reading to the end. I was intrigued by the premise, but I wasn't riveted. I guess I just don't find stories about how scarring and difficult it was to grow up as an upper-middle-class white girl in the 80s as touching as I used to. I stopped reading after the episode where as a teen the heroine is picked to be "the Le Clic girl" and has to endure modeling jobs, a mild form of fame, and travel to China, poor thing. Some of us would love to travel to China. Maybe the sections about her adult life are more engaging.