Title: Spent: Memoirs of a Shopping Addict
Author: Avis Cardella
Publisher: Hachette
Pub Date: 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-03560-6
Genre: Memoir
I was provided a free copy of this book from the publisher to post my honest review.
Synopsis from the publisher:
What happens when someone is consumed by the desire to consume? In this candid and visceral memoir, Avis Cardella details the shopping addiction that over her life-and writes about her road to recovery.
From an early age, Avis Cardella was entranced by the transformative powers of clothing, and shopping. Her rold model was her dazzling mother, who always seemed dressed for a party. As a teenager, Cardella obsessed over fashion magazines. She memorized the names of models and the styles of fashion photographers. The images held the allure and promise of a glamorous life.
Later, Cardella would become a model herself and then a fashion journalist. But what was once glamorous changed in tenor after her mother's unexpected death left her shopping away countless afternoons in order to avoid her gried.
Set to the tom-tom beat of New York City in the 1990's, Spent follows Cardella through a decade long shopping odyssy that took her from fabulous luxury boutiques to sample sales. Her wardrobe was brimming with designer fashions: Prada, Armani, and Jil Sander. But as the millennium drew to a close, so did her grand lifestyle. As her credit card debt grew like the pile of unworn clothing in the back of her closet, she had to confront the real reason behind her compulsion to buy, and the truth about this thoroughly modern addiction.
Written in gorgeous, jewel-like prose, Spent is an incisive exploration of our cultural need to spend and a timely, deeply personal, and shockingly dramatic story of addiction and recovery.
About the Author:
After spending her formative years reading fashion magazines voraciously, Avis Cardella found her calling writing about photography, fashion, and culture. She has written for British Vogue, American Photo, and Surface, among other publications. She lives in Paris with her husband.
My review:
I really liked this book. I think it let me live vicariously through the author as I read about her shopping trips and the items she bought and left me thinking that I would have liked that lifestyle. If only I could have afforded it. I thought the writing was really good and the author was very candid about her shopping, spending, and addiction. I can see how the addiction could start and build, as I have a slight book addiction. Yet it gives credence to the world of today and what fashion magazines and the media say that women should wear and look like. I highly recommend this book.
Check out the authors website at:
http://www.aviscardella.com/
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