JELL-O Girls

A Family History

By: Allie Rowbottom

Narrated by: Allie Rowbottom

Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

A memoir that braids the evolution of one of America's most iconic branding campaigns with the stirring tales of the women who lived behind its façade - told by the inheritor of their stories.

In 1899, Allie Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of the most profitable business deals in American history, and the generations that followed enjoyed immense privilege - but they were also haunted by suicides, cancer, alcoholism, and mysterious ailments.

More than 100 years after that deal was struck, Allie's mother Mary was diagnosed with the same incurable cancer, a disease that had also claimed her own mother's life. Determined to combat what she had come to consider the "Jell-O curse" and her looming mortality, Mary began obsessively researching her family's past, determined to understand the origins of her illness and the impact on her life of Jell-O and the traditional American values the company championed. Before she died in 2015, Mary began to send Allie boxes of her research and notes, in the hope that her daughter might write what she could not. JELL-O Girls is the liberation of that story.

A gripping examination of the dark side of an iconic American product and a moving portrait of the women who lived in the shadow of its fractured fortune, JELL-O Girls is a family history, a feminist history, and a story of motherhood, love, and loss. In crystalline prose, Rowbottom considers the roots of trauma not only in her own family, but in the American psyche as well, ultimately weaving a story that is deeply personal, as well as deeply connected to the collective female experience.

©2018 Allie Rowbottom (P)2018 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"Intimate and intriguing.... A fascinating feminist history of both a company and a family." (Publishers Weekly)

"Rowbottom delivers a moving memoir of a daughter seeking to understand her mother, family, and the place of women in American society, and the narrative also serves as a thoughtful, up-close-and-personal feminist critique of a cultural icon. A book brimming with intelligence and compassion." (Kirkus)

"Rowbottom paints a fascinating portrait of the family behind one of America's most famous desserts.... This account illuminates both the rise of an American product and dynasty. The renown of Jell-O will attract a variety of readers to this memoir, and the storytelling will keep them turning pages to the very end." (Library Journal)

A powerful book about the struggle of women in the patriarchy

Mother and daughter both absorbed the weight of the patriarchal ideal, suffered and fought back. Beautifully written and very moving

Great book

The author is not the best reader/ performer, but the story stands strong in its own. A beautiful book.

Fascinating look at a mother-daughter relationship

Allie Rowbottom is of an age to be my daughter and I of her mother. This book is a beautifully written account of what it means to be a member of Generation Y raised by a Baby Boomer. This is the story of three generations of women who struggle with finding their identity in a culture that undervalues women's intellect and overvalues their appearances and what they can do for the men in their orbits. I see my friends in this story, their relationships with both their mothers and their daughters, and their own struggles with identity in a world where feminism was taking flight.

Along the way we get a glimpse into the world of eating disorders, mass psychogenic illness, conversion disorder, and the culture of the Jell-O legacy and how it is intertwined with all of the above.

Joyless lives

Jell-O topped with Patriarchy - crippler of young adults. Women doomed to misery from birth.

Interesting...

The story is intriguing but can be hard to follow as it jumps around. The narrators voice is really dry and takes some getting use to.

Love

An intimate tale of womanhood and familial and cultural legacy. Beautifully written and thought-provoking.

A Wonderful Book for the Right Audience

The overlap in the Venn diagram of folks who want to wax nostalgic about Jell-o, and folks who want to rail against the patriarchy is probably pretty small, so I can see why "Jell-o Girls" was a hard sell for many. In the vein of "The Bell Jar," or "Girl, Interrupted," " Jell-o Girls," tells the story of three generations of women, who despite their wealth & privilege are nonetheless cursed by patriarchal American society, addiction, inherited trauma, and illness. The book weaves the stories of the heiresses to the Jell-o fortune, with the history of Jell-o, and a strange affliction that befell young women in the Le Roy, NY, the birthplace of the famous dessert. It mostly succeeds in this effort, though I agree with reviewers who said the timelines between stories are sometimes erratic, and the prose and metaphors become repetitive. Overall, I found "Jell-o Girls" a jarring memoir about the spells women weave, and the ways family can be both toxic and touching.

Not what I expected.

This book got rave revues on Amazon. It was a let down. The history of Jello was too frequent and detracted from the story.

very interesting lives and story

This author did a very good job of interweaving the generations of her family, with the story of their fortune, and the occurrences with the mysterious illnesses in New York.

An erratic memoir

I listened to this audio book on a long drive with some breaks & interruptions which leads to my description of finding the story erratic or convoluted. It was a guilt-ridden, gut-wrenching, heart-rending, depressing narrative of remembrance, wealth, love and loss within an undercurrent of history. It certainly kept my attention. I would like to read Judy's story and more about the LaRoy girls.