Linda Richman reads her audiobook with gusto, and
she needs to, because there is not much in her words to really educate her
listeners. The basic message is that
even though she has gone through some awful times, she has survived, and you
can too. This is not really going to
help many people, so the main reason to listen to the book is for entertainment
value. Richman certainly has had her share
of troubles: her father died young, her mother was depressed and highly critical,
she had agoraphobia that confined her to her house for 11 years, and her son
died in an automobile accident. Her
biggest claim to fame is that she is the mother-in-law of Mike Myers, and he
copied for her for his “Linda Richman” character on Saturday Night Live. You may have seen her on the Rosie O’Donnell
TV show. She now lectures regularly at
the Canyon Ranch Spa, giving advice to people about how to overcome their problems.

The audiobook is an abridged version
of the book, but unless you are a big fan, I expect that you will find it quite
enough. Her messages, such as that you
need to be able to laugh at other people and yourself, and that you need to
give yourself time to feel awful when you are feeling down, get pretty tired
fairly soon. She’s a survivor, and she
does what she needs to do to survive, but she is not a very sympathetic
character, by her own admission. Her
story of how she came to hit her mother on the say that she told her mother
that her sister was dead shows what state the family was in, and how troubled
her relationship with her mother was, but it doesn’t make you like her any
more. There’s no denying that Linda
Richman is quite a character, but she doesn’t make me want to take any advice
from her.

Categories: SelfHelp, Memoirs

Tags: Wellness and Health Psychology, Life Problems