"There's something to be said about preaching eternal life while slowly dying inside."
Ostensibly a memoir about the author's relationship with her faith and the difficult choices made as a result of both embracing and rejecting it, "Bad Mormon" eventually devolved into the lengths a specific person would go through to join a reality-TV show.
Heather Gay's tale started out intriguing (it seemed she was more than happy to share insights into sacred, secretive rites, but only as a way to justify the book's title), but quickly lost focus the more it became clear that the narrator was glossing over major details and minimizing her privilege.
To wit, it seems rather strange that it took 60 pages for her to mention fleetingly and in passing that she was a "piano prodigy." There was also an odd scenario described where she is titillated by secretly going to see a movie by herself on her mission -- yet at the same time, she had somehow internally justified that it was OK to steal and sell drugs while working with Doctors Without Borders?
The wedding and honeymoon scenario that the author shared was also exceedingly bizarre, as the basis for her perceived bad vibes were never explained. This and other instances cemented the idea that it's difficult -- impossible? -- to trust a memoir that elides massive events and occurrences.
Based on my morbid curiosity stemming from aspects of my upbringing, the book represented a unique concept but lost its impact as it lost its own thread and became progressively murkier, leaving readers to draw assumptions about the truth of confusing situations.
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