I'm Glad My Mom Died

Jennette McCurdy’s memoir is more complicated than its provocative title suggests. Instead of a simple indictment, it tells the story from the viewpoint she held as a child actress, when pleasing her mother still mattered most, and lets the pattern of manipulation show through on its own. The writing is clear and insightful. The subject is abuse and grief, so expect a dark and painful read.

Worth knowing Jennette McCurdy was the star of iCarly and Sam & Cat on Nickelodeon between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, and this memoir from 2022 is about the mother who put her there: Debra McCurdy, who taught her daughter calorie restriction at eleven, showered her into her teens, read her diaries and emails, and died of cancer in 2013. The title is not a joke and the book earns it, chapter by short chapter, in a flat present tense that never asks for sympathy. It covers the eating disorders, the drinking, the network, and the therapy that let her say the sentence on the cover. It sold out its first printing in a day, stayed on the bestseller lists for more than a year, and is the reason she no longer acts.

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