‘Dear Boy’: Weber’s memoir doesn’t let readers in enough

In a 2009 interview with The Paris Review, acclaimed poet and memoir writer Mary Karr explained that the biggest problem with memoirs today is 'they're not reflective enough. They lack self-awareness. I always tell my students that if the reader knows something about your psychology that you do not admit, you're in trouble.”

This is, unfortunately, the problem with Heather Weber's memoir, 'Dear Boy,” which details Weber's life growing up in California, her adolescence in Iowa, and her brother's early death in a car accident. Throughout the work, Weber keeps readers at a distance both in terms of content and form. The work is presented in short, terse letters, and nearly all the characters are referred to by general pronouns (her brother is 'the boy,” not even 'brother”) or cute nouns (her mother is 'Peaches). The result is a work that pushes readers away from the narrator, instead of into her corner.

While the work centers around her brother's accident and death, the real story - what would have possibly made a quality memoir - is the story Weber doesn't tell: the story of why they were estranged, the story of her own inaction, the story that requires self-awareness.

She blames her brother for 'crimes of brotherly silence and neglect,” but refuses to reflect on her own distance. When readers are not privy to the author's internal thoughts and struggles, we are left to draw our own conclusions in jarring scenes like one at her brother's funeral where Weber refuses to wear the memorial T-shirt designed and worn by his friends until she gets home: 'To say it's not my style is an understatement.”

Who is this person? Who would say such a thing? Without Weber's introspection and reflection, Weber becomes a character as vague as the title she goes by in the work: 'the girl.”

IF YOU GO: READING

' Who: Heather Weber reads from 'Dear Boy:

' When: 3 p.m. Saturday

' Where: Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City

' Cost: Free