BookLife Reviews
11/20/2023
Jacobson’s debut is an elegant, engaging account of her life as a wife and mother facing a harrowing marriage, then as a single parent and eventual successful business executive. Unappreciated, obese, and struggling with an undiagnosed eating disorder, Marsha accepts Peter’s proposal even when she knows instinctively that “this marriage would nail me into a very bad box.” Later, even while dealing with divorce and a vengeful Peter, and mothering two little girls, she joins Harvard Business School. Though plagued by illness, she completes her course as “a decent student … but not a star,” and then starts work, happy to provide for her daughters. (Promised support from Peter never comes.) She marries longtime friend Jay, who is recovering from his wife’s suicide, but Jay’s traumatic childhood comes to haunt their marriage.
Jacobson’s excellent storytelling skills make the memoir riveting. She plunges us straight into the heart of things right from the beginning and is able to maintain this steady pace through the book. At the same time, the narrative is thoughtful and reflective when the story demands. Unpredictable and domineering, Peter is the most interesting character in the book, though for negative reasons. So is Judge Samuel. Marsha’s second husband Jay, meanwhile, endures the far-reaching consequences of childhood abuse, sensitive material that Jacobson handles with insight and empathy. Minnie and Julia, Marsha’s grandmothers, are incredibly strong and empathetic women who with their kindness and help support their neglected grandchild.
Jacobson’s career takes her to fascinating places, such as Mattel headquarters in Japan, and she captures them and their cultures with nuance and welcome bursts of wit. She addresses work challenges and the several ways in which she tackled them. Her obvious passion for her chosen career is evident in these anecdotes. Jacobson’s never-say-die attitude, her immense love for her two girls, and her strong narrative skills make this memoir an absorbing and rewarding read.
Takeaway: Compelling memoir of breaking free of a controlling relationship to find business success.
Comparable Titles: Anne Theroux’s The Year of the End, Indra Nooyi’s My Life in Full.
Production grades Cover: B Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
From the Publisher
"Courageous...an affecting, personal exploration of toxic relationships."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Jacobson's debut is an elegant, engaging account of her life as a wife and mother facing a harrowing marriage, then as a single parent and eventual successful business executive.
Jacobson's excellent storytelling skills make the memoir riveting. She plunges us straight into the heart of things right from the beginning and is able to maintain this steady pace through the book. At the same time, the narrative is thoughtful and reflective when the story demands. Unpredictable and domineering, Peter is the most interesting character in the book, though for negative reasons. So is Judge Samuel. Marsha's second husband Jay, meanwhile, endures the far-reaching consequences of childhood abuse, sensitive material that Jacobson handles with insight and empathy. Minnie and Julia, Marsha's grandmothers, are incredibly strong and empathetic women who with their kindness and help support their neglected grandchild.
Jacobson's career takes her to fascinating places, such as Mattel headquarters in Japan, and she captures them and their cultures with nuance and welcome bursts of wit. She addresses work challenges and the several ways in which she tackled them. Her obvious passion for her chosen career is evident in these anecdotes. Jacobson's never-say-die attitude, her immense love for her two girls, and her strong narrative skills make this memoir an absorbing and rewarding read."
-BookLife
"Marsha Jacobson's existence has definitely never been a bed of roses. When she was young, her painful lack of self-confidence due to a weight problem led her into a marriage with an abusive, overpowering man, who harassed her for years by taking her to court after she broke free of him. She raised two daughters, put herself through Harvard business school and gradually built a successful career while battling serious health problems. She fell deeply in love and married a second time but did not find lasting happiness....What's refreshingly different about this memoir, however, is that Jacobson, rather than dwelling upon how much she suffered, gives us the facts rather briskly and then goes on to write about what interests her far more-the resourceful and courageous ways she coped with one crisis after another. The result is fascinating and compelling reading."
-Joyce Johnson, author of the prizewinning memoir Minor Characters
"Marsha Jacobson's The Wrong Calamity is a courageously written story of a courageously lived life. She takes us inside unexpected stress and pain to renewed hope with humane clarity."
-Walter Bode, former editor-in-chief of Grove Press and senior editor at Harcourt Publishing
"From her re-entry into dating and the snafus that led to new realizations about those she chose and her moral and ethical foundations to business and personal growth choices, Jacobson creates a powerful story of calamity, discovery, and change. This will serve as an inspiration (and road map) to other women facing similar conundrums.
Libraries and readers seeking stories of not just escape from abuse, but considerations of the financial, psychology, and social influences on their evolution, will find The Wrong Calamity enlightening, revealing, and hard to put down."
-Midwest Book Review
Kirkus Reviews
2023-10-23
A successful business owner shares her stories of love, loss, and survival in this debut memoir.
Born “in the whoosh of baby boomers” in a Lafayette, Indiana hospital whose wards were “named with Bible references,” Jacobson spent her life breaking glass ceilings all over the globe as a successful business executive and management consultant. After moving up the corporate ladder in Tokyo, Jacobson returned to the U.S. to become the vice president of operations at Fidelity Investments. While she does chart her career’s trajectory, work takes a backseat in this deeply personal memoir, which focuses on the lasting impacts of abusive relationships. The book begins with Jacobson’s recollection of the summer before she entered sixth grade, with her mother frantically moving her children out of their New Jersey home to return to Indiana while her father was at work. This destabilizing, abrupt move not only severed the author’s relationship with her father and paternal grandmother, but also set the stage for the rest of the memoir. The spontaneity that initially sparked her attraction to her first husband, for instance, developed into an explosive volatility. Her second marriage was damaged by her husband’s PTSD, which was untreated. This frank depiction of ruined family ties and childhood trauma offers cleareyed insights into the human psyche and addresses why so many people find it hard to leave abusive relationships. Given Jacobson’s background as a business leader, her decision to write her memoir is particularly courageous. The author’s candor may be useful to readers looking to learn from Jacobson’s experiences and start making better decisions for themselves. Its inclusion of small group discussion questions (centered on decisions the author made inside her relationships) reflects the book’s emphasis on encouraging other women to think deeply about their own choices in finding or keeping a partner.
An affecting, personal exploration of toxic relationships.
