Can't Help Myself

January 8, 2018
Goldstein, who writes the popular “Love Letters” column for the Boston Globe, assembles her favorite entries from the column’s nine years of publication, along with details from her own life, in this heartfelt look at the life of an advice columnist. In the memoir portion, Goldstein recalls a particularly difficult breakup, followed by her mother’s diagnosis with stage-4 cancer and the grueling years of treatment during which Goldstein served as her mother’s primary caretaker. The excerpted columns cover topics ranging from “work spouses” to online dating to striving for friendship after a breakup, and include some of the more thoughtful comments left by readers on the Globe’s website. The book’s strength is the way Goldstein shows the blurring of personal and professional boundaries from the unique perspective of an advice columnist. She admits to making mistakes: for example, lashing out at a recent cancer survivor whose letter expressed annoyance at her caregiver husband—a complaint that hit close to home for Goldstein at the time—and feeling like a “certifiable fraud” for answering sex questions during a bout of celibacy. Though Goldstein includes some ancillary details that occasionally steer the book off course (notably anecdotes about her sister’s relationship woes), her story of coping with her mother’s illness is moving and tenderly wrought. The book will appeal to loyal readers of advice columns—particularly Goldstein’s­—but be forewarned, this book is a tearjerker.

February 1, 2018
A relationship columnist fuses sage advice with dispatches from her own personal life.After getting unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend, Boston Globe entertainment reporter Goldstein (The Singles, 2012, etc.) jumped at the opportunity to pen her own recurring online feature devoted to the local Massachusetts dating scene. "Love Letters: debuted in 2009, and the author shares the inaugural letter from a frustrated woman concerned about her boyfriend's commitment potential. The column came equipped with a "robust comments section" in which readers shared their reactions, and which Goldstein liberally shares throughout. Featuring a lively mix of experiences in love, dating, intimacy, and other topics, the column became an immediate sensation, and the author's inbox crested with pleas for counsel. Despite a lack of psychology acumen, she parlayed her talent for dispensing rational advice to family and friends directly into her writing. This made her accessible, shrewd, and relatable, and her real-world advice leveled the playing field with the everyday people who read (and responded to) the column. Goldstein is at her strongest when tackling such issues as platonic workplace relationships, managing the sting of rejection, uneven sex drives in a relationship, and risky interoffice romances; all of these are issues the author has encountered and overcome. As the years progressed, her reading audience and popularity ballooned along with her confidence level in dispensing advice. She tackles the ethics of relationship snooping, age-related woes of the heart, and pornography use while periodically dealing with the trolls in the comments section. Goldstein's hybrid of guidance and confessional turns poignant when she discusses her mother's cancer diagnosis and she is relegated to finding "extreme escapism" tactics and time with a caregiver support group to balance the emotional toll of the situation. Charming chapters on sex and her reluctant re-entry into the dating world strike another harmonious balance of breezy and informative.A witty, entertaining memoir offering guidance on the precarious integration of life and love.

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