Turner, Denice. A Beginner’s Guide to Faults: a Memoir. University of Nevada Press, 2026.
Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing I often get to read really good books. This is one such book.
This is going to sound like a backhanded compliment…but I hate it when books are so engrossing that I chew, choke and swallow them without taking a breath. I don’t stop to take notes, like I usually do. I don’t stop to process what I have read like I should. I literally speed-read through the pages like a woman obsessed.
There is no doubt in my mind Turner was addicted to that feeling of new love. She needed to feel a constant state of honeymoon or else she didn’t feel loved. She wanted to be courted and adored. Worshipped. Her love in return was complicated. Her relationships were stacked like a house of cards. Within the first few chapters Turner is describing an experience with group sex and the pitfalls of loving more than one person. This is about being a complicated woman finding her way to stability by finding self-worth and loving herself. It is about finding peace and forgiveness after navigating a lifetime of chaos.
My only complaint was that the timeline of Turner’s story was super wonky. I couldn’t keep track of where each relationship fit into her racetrack of a life.
A personal confusion was the double standard Turner’s marriage seemed to have. Her husband could leave their anniversary dinner because his stripper girlfriend got beat up but she couldn’t have the same indiscretions without penalty.
Author fact: A Beginner’s Guide to Faults is not Turner’s only publication.
Book trivia: A Beginner’s Guide to Faults could be a movie.
Playlist: “Rock-a-Bye Baby,” “Love Song” from Pippen, “Big Spender” from Sweet Charity, “Send in the Clowns” from Little Night Music, “Someone Like You” from Stop the World, “Roar by Katy Perry, “Some Days You Gotta Dance,” “Addicted to Love,” Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Janis Joplin, “Hella Good,” George Strait, “Sailing to Philadelphia” by Mark Knopfler, “Habanera,” “Theme from the Apartment,” Eddie Vedder’s “Rise,” Eric Clapton, George Harrison, “Layla” by Derek and the Dominoes, Sex Pistols, “Denise” by Randy and the Rainbows, Ramones, Woody Guthrie, Pink Floyd, “Pachelbel, Jay-Z, Country Joe and the Fish’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” Olds 97’s “Designs on You,” Little Bitty, “That’s My Bitch,” “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars, and Johnny Cash.
