Blake Butler

A gripping, unforgettable memoir from one of the best, most original writers of the 21st century. Blake Butler and Molly Brodak connected almost instantly. Two singular writers, each grappling with a degree of personal extremity and uncertainty, connected via mutual artistic admiration and an appreciation of each other’s idiosyncrasies. Over the next ten years, they corresponded, fell in love, and built a home together. Just shy of three years into their marriage, struggling with mental illness and a lifetime of trauma, Molly took her own life. In the days after Molly’s death, parceling through their home, Blake discovered a part of his wife’s life that he knew nothing about, and which fundamentally shaped his understanding of their relationship. Molly is an account of a marriage ended by suicide and of what it means to live and continue on without the person you made a life with. It’s also an attempt at understanding - at reconciling the aspects of a life that unfurl in secret and at contending and coming to terms with the tenderness and cruelty of someone who has passed into the unknowable. Fearless and honest above all, Blake Butler’s memoir confronts unthinkable loss with empathy and openness.

Molly

jordan

Mat Connor

This book was hard to put down. It’s the kind of book you read between the cracks in your fingers. You keep reading because it’s awkward, cringy, and sadder than most books you’ll ever read. When I finished Molly I gave it a good rating, but the more I think back on this book I feel conflicted about the power imbalance displayed here.

Molly is about the novelist Blake Butler’s reckoning with the suicide of his wife Molly Brodak, a poet and memoirist. I don’t know that anyone can fairly judge what a writer is trying to do with their book, but I came away with the impression that Butler set out with good intentions to memorize Molly only to end with much more complicated and bitter feelings about her.

When someone commits suicide, people usually speak about them in one of two ways. One way is to not say much about the person at all, people just give sad looks when the topic comes up in conversation and quickly change the subject, the implication being that talking about what happened is either too sad or even a little impolite. The other way is to be like a detective trying to piece together all of the evidence about why the person did what they did. I’m not sure if there is a right or wrong way, but Molly is in the latter category. 

Early on Butler talks about the complicated feeling he had when the police and Molly’s family asked for a copy of her suicide letter. He makes the point that the letter was meant for him, but he understands why they need to read it. He includes the full letter in the book, which took me back at first. I found it more troubling when he starts picking and choosing from her personal diaries, emails, and texts to tell her story. He talks about aspects of her behavior that Molly wouldn’t even grapple with in her personal diaries. I find it hard to believe that he would feel comfortable with a partner picking and choosing from his personal diaries and text messages to tell his story.

I think Butler probably wanted to tell her story sympathetically, especially her difficult family life and upbringing. But it’s hard to deny that the Molly he describes here isn’t a terrible person. He calls her manipulative, abusive, a gaslighter, lists her compulsive lives in detail, tries to diagnose her with a borderline personality disorder, accuses her of grooming her students, complains that she wasted a bunch of his inheritance money on a boob job, and gives plenty more examples of her thoughtlessness and cruelty. 

You get the impression that he starts feeling a little self-conscious about how negatively he portrays her, so he makes sure to tell us that he was flawed too, absorbed in his work, neglected groceries, and drank too much. I agree with another reviewer here who says the book starts to feel like an Am I the Asshole Reddit Post. 

I just can’t escape the feeling that Butler told this story too soon. Maybe he needed to write this book to move on with his life, but I’m not sure it was fair to Molly to share this story just yet. Maybe he should have waited a few years and tackled these themes in his fiction instead.

Am I glad I read this book? I think so because it raises interesting questions how how we can and should talk about people when they are gone. But I do think he should have waited a little longer before sharing this story. 

For a less problematic memoir about an abusive relationship, I recommend  In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado  . She does some interesting things with the typical memoir structure and you get the sense that she had a little more time to reckon with her trauma before telling her story.

i didn't know there was controversy surrounding this book then about of a fourth of the way through i wondered if this book was controversial only to discover it was quite controversial. i'm not sure this was a book i needed to read, but i'm sure it's a book blake butler felt he needed to write. do i know if molly was a good or bad person after this? not really, but i know of molly, and maybe that's all a memoir is about sometimes. i think grief is a strange thing, and everyone reacts to it differently. i'm not sure if that had any bearing on the lack of editing, as i can imagine how it might. overall, this felt immensely personal. usually i walk away from an intimate memoir grateful for the peek into someone's life previously unbeknownst to me. this time, i felt a little more disjointed. perhaps the lack of style contributed, or a plethora of other reasons. i think in the end, it came across as though blake butler had something to say, and didn't really care who listened. but does that beg the question - why publish a book about it?

tiff <3

Wowee, probably the most heartbreaking book I’ve read. Blake is unflinching is his storytelling. Research this book before you read it so you know what you’re in for!

Molly Bridge

so much love and pain in this work. you have to read with a full stomach and clear head. 

abi a

(none of the people who said crazy shit online about this book actually read it, and if they did read it, they’d be embarrassed about what they’d said) 

Molly

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