On Becoming

I got around to reading Becoming recently and could not make it past half of the first section - Becoming Me. The prose reads well and there is a good flow to the story Michelle Obama is trying to tell but after about page thirty seven, I had to admit there was simply no way to get to end of the book running over four hundred pages. Every human life can make for a novel if the story is told well - or atleast that is the theory. In this case, the telling is certainly not at fault and the person who the book has by all accounts lived a remarkable life, so her story is unique. 

Yet, something about the telling as polished as it is, fails to connect to Everyman and an universal level. Obama comes across as aloof and sharply centered in herself. She narrates experiences without giving us insights that transcend the narrow confines of one human life no matter how unique. There is also a sense of pervasive airbrushing that makes for a two-dimensional, politically correct sort of narrative. Perhaps in her position, it is not even possible to write something that is not so. 

I skipped over to the second section of the book - Becoming Us. As before, good pace and good storytelling but still hard to keep up with. Lot of references to Ivy League schools. The feeling of sterility continues into this section of the book to - be it in her account of how she fell in love with her husband or how it was to lose her dear friend to cancer at an early age. It reads like an accounting exercise minus the soul such events demand of the writer.

Then you have to wonder what the point of the book is for the average reader. Reading this book (or attempting to atleast) felt like trying on this cute outfit at a store that looks great on the hanger but inside the fitting room, under the strongly unflattering lights, it does not sit right or feel right. You put it back on the hanger disappointed and once again it looks brimful of potential. Maybe another reader, would feel very different about the book just as that very dress could be utterly perfect for another woman.