Some people have great stories. Others are good at telling stories. When the two are combined, it’s the perfect recipe for a great memoir. Danielle Dayney is one of those writers. She has a gripping style combined with a lifetime of stories involving love, work, family, hardships, and tragedy, all of the necessary ingredients that make up a life story worth telling. Below is my review of Dayney’s memoir, When Love Sticks Around, along with an interview with the author.
When Love Sticks Around book summary
When Love Sticks Around follows Dayney from childhood to motherhood as she deals with everything from money troubles to daddy issues with a candid and accepting tone. Many writers tend to look back on their lives melodramatically. Dayney’s narration is very matter of fact while still self-aware.
Her early stories are straightforward in their vagueness and childlike perspective, from the time she suffered a bad burn to her hands to the time her mother witnessed a child get hit by a car, leaving the author to fill in the blanks from the backseat. She doesn’t always give you the full picture because she herself didn’t always see the full picture. But she gives you enough to go on and think about afterward.
As an adult, she begins to find her stability as a wife and mother, though danger and tragedy still pop in to remind her that even happy endings have rough patches. But she, like the rest of us, finds a way to make it through. Sometimes she receives a fresh perspective on an old memory. Other times, those perspectives are sharpened and clarified in their original iterations. It’s interesting to watch Dayney’s life evolve within a few hundred pages.
The format
The book is organized in a mostly linear format. We start at Dayney’s childhood where she establishes her cast of characters, starting with her mom and stepfather, Jim, and then later her younger sister, her mostly absent father, and a number of friends and foils who pop in and out of her life.
The chapters are short, getting to the point and moving forward at a relatively fast pace while providing enough detail to paint a clear picture of the memories, warts and all. Her chapters leave you thinking about the situation she has just shared, relating them to your own similar experiences or gaping at the moments you hope to never have to experience.
A few of the chapters seesaw between parallel memories with a specific food connecting the two moments. It’s an interesting, almost cinematic format that arrives later in the book once Dayney has established her family, frustrations, and her evolving lifestyle. Flipflopping between the two memories within the chapters illustrates her growth along with that baseline foundation that our youth instills in us.
The setting
A big reason why I found Dayney’s story so compelling is because of the era in which it takes place. Her childhood stories take place in the 80’s and 90’s, much like my own. She is a few years older than me so her memoires of the 80’s far surpass mine, but it’s still a comforting place to revisit. Still, she keeps her focus on the story itself rather than relying on packing it full of era-appropriate references.
It’s becoming more apparent that our generation is living through some major societal, political, environmental, and technological changes. However, our individual stories are still front and center in our lives. And it’s interesting to see how others our age maneuvered through the different stages of life at the same time that we as readers were living our own.
And it’s eye-opening to see how these bigger, generation-defining moments infiltrate and affect our personal stories as well as the more universal life experiences, such as parenthood, grief, and career struggles. Even if our stories are not the same, there’s still something comforting when someone shares their trials and triumphs and helps you to realize what you have overcome as a fellow millennial and human being.
My recommendation
I recommend When Love Sticks Around to memoir readers who love short stories about family and relationships. Readers should be able to handle raw and intense situations that leave out the gory details mixed in with more entertaining, endearing, and enlightening moments that make up Dayney’s interestingly lived and compellingly told memoir. I truly believe that this book belongs on the shelves next to more famous memoirs like Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle and Michelle Obama’s Becoming.
An interview with Danielle Dayney
Your writing style is really captivating and energetic. Were you inspired by any famous memoirs?
Oh my goodness, that’s a really lovely thing to say. Yes, I do read a lot of memoirs – my favorites are Mary Karr and Elizabeth Wurtzel. I would say that their writing inspired me to write, but the style of my book was more so inspired by an online writing group called YeahWrite. The editors there inspire their writers to show, not tell, always find their “so what,” and write with all five senses. I have learned so much from them and all the awesome lifelong writer friends I’ve made through the group.
You touch on your history as a magazine writer in the book. How did you get into writing professionally? Did you take any classes or have any training?
The music magazine I wrote for was actually produced by my first English professor in community college. He asked me if I wanted to work for him as a volunteer probably halfway through the first semester. I started with monthly album reviews, and after I had a few months of experience with that, he asked me to start reviewing concerts.
I mostly reviewed local Ohio bands, but occasionally I had opportunities to review bands like Sevendust and Incubus. I also interviewed members from bands like Default and Hoobastank.
How did you decide which stories ended up in the book? Did you tend to add or delete stories in the editing process?
In the early drafts this book looked different. Through the editing process, some stories were cut, and others were added in. Most of the stories that didn’t make it into the book didn’t serve my theme as much as I wanted them to, and they might end up on my blog or maybe getting published in a journal when I have a bit more time to polish them. And, actually, a couple of the stories in the memoir weren’t written and added until the later edits with my publisher.
Has your family read your book? Did you show them any of your book before it was published?
My sister read everything from the bad first drafts to the finished product. She was really my first cheerleader. My husband wanted to wait until it was finished to read it, so he read the book as a whole a few months ago. They both loved it, but they’re family, so I think they might be obligated to say that.
It seems like food plays a big part in triggering your sense memory. There are a few really interesting chapters where you teeter between past and present experiences when you encounter a particular food. How important has food been in your life?
That’s a really interesting question. As a child, we didn’t have many home-cooked meals. My parents couldn’t always afford it. So food was more like sustenance. I ate whatever Mom made because I was hungry.
Only now, as an adult, do some of those special meals trigger memories and feelings for me.
If you could time travel back to any chapter of your book, which would it be? Would you go back to re-live an experience or change it?
If I could go back to any chapter, I would go back to before my mom was sick so I could spend a little more time with her, asking her questions and making sure she knew how much she meant to me.
Growing up poor can lead to an obsession with money. You talk a lot about your desire to have nice things and to break out of your childhood poverty. What have you been able to do as an adult that your childhood self would be happy to hear about?
I think my childhood self would be most happy to hear that I married, graduated college, and had two beautiful daughters, just like Mom. She’d also be happy to hear that we’ve taken a couple of family vacations to a real beach instead of the pond in Michigan.
You seem to acclimate well to new living environments in different cities. What is your relationship with home?
To me, home is family and love, not a house or a city. With that being said, there are certain places that I’ve lived that felt more like home in my heart.
I’m from Toledo, Ohio, but Detroit was the first place I lived that I felt like I could really be myself. My friends there became family, and most of them I consider family even today. Virginia is the first place I’ve lived for more than five years since Toledo, and it definitely feels like home in the sense that my husband’s family is close, and both of my girls have been raised in Virginia. Plus, I’ve made a handful of really close friends here.
You describe yourself as a curious kid, sometimes to a fault. Are you still curious and adventurous? Have any of your more dangerous experiences tamed you?
Wow, I don’t think I’d consider myself adventurous as a kid. Maybe naïve or bored or even attention-seeking, but not adventurous. I was, and am, so timid when it comes to social situations, which probably stems from the absence of my biological father and never feeling like I was good enough for him to love me.
I do think becoming a parent and also getting older has calmed me down substantially. I’m smarter and wiser than I was back then, as I believe most of us are. And, if anything, making mistakes as an adolescent has taught me a thing or two.
Do you have plans to write more books? If so, would they be memoirs/non-fiction or fiction?
Yes, I have two books that I’m currently working on. Another memoir, this one is about parenting with anxiety and low self-worth. I am still cultivating most of the chapters and figuring out where the story wants to go. I also have the first draft of a novel set in Detroit. That one is something that is very special to me, as I still think of Detroit as my second home.
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Love the pretty cover of this book in combination with the personal stories; I am a sucker for memoir. 🙂