I’m Glad My Mom Died

As emotionally exhausting as this relentlessly harrowing and downbeat memoir is for listeners, one can only imagine the toll it must have taken for McCurdy to write and read it aloud. McCurdy does an excellent job reading her brutally honest memoir about being forced into an acting career she never wanted, to please her obsessive-compulsive mother. “My mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me,” she tells listeners. Her mother was a cancer survivor who used that diagnosis to leverage jobs for her daughter and to keep her family under her thumb. Her control over McCurdy, the family’s meal ticket, was nearly complete. When McCurdy started developing breasts, her mother immediately put her on a restrictive diet to keep her small. Her mother’s control tightens when McCurdy wins a costarring role on TV’s iCarly. When her mother’s cancer returns and she dies, McCurdy begins a downward spiral into anorexia, bulimia, and alcoholism.