‘If I have learned one thing from this shockingly beautiful venture called life, it is this: failure has taught me lessons I would never otherwise have understood. I have evolved more as a result of things going wrong than when everything seemed to be going right.’
Failure is a universal experience. Most of us will fail at various things over the course of our lifetimes. I, for one, have failed multiple driving tests. I failed to get the grades I needed to go to my dream university. I’ve failed in the past to properly look after my body and my mental health. At times, I have failed at being a good friend, girlfriend, daughter, and sister. Failure is not a particularly pleasant experience. It can be humiliating, demoralising, and bloody painful. Given the prevalence of ‘cancel culture,’ making a mistake can be met with great hostility nowadays, especially if you are in the public eye. As a result, there is this increasing pressure to be faultless, even though being flawed is an intrinsic part of being human, and making mistakes is conducive to self-development. In How To Fail, Elizabeth Day seeks to remind readers of the formative value of failure, and how failure can be a positive learning experience that betters us as individuals.
Elizabeth Day is a highly accomplished journalist, and this book is inspired by her award-winning podcast, How To Fail With Elizabeth Day (which, I must confess, I have never listened to). In this book, Day draws on her own experiences of failure, as well as those of various celebrity interviewees. I purchased this book because a couple of YouTubers I watch recommended it, specifically for people who struggle with perfectionism, and dealing with exam failure (check). The book is divided into thirteen chapters, each focusing on a different area of failure, such as failing at fitting in, dating, friendships, work, and even failing at being Gwyneth Paltrow.
How To Fail is eloquently written, refreshingly honest, and down-to-earth. I have great respect for Day for writing about her failed cycles of IVF and her miscarriage in the chapter, ‘How To Fail At Babies.’ This was incredibly eye-opening for me as, prior to reading this chapter, I knew very little about what the process of IVF involves, how time-consuming it can be, and how draining and potentially demoralising it may be for individuals going through it. It must have been incredibly difficult for Day to speak about. However, she explains that she goes into so much detail in this chapter because there was barely any literature available on the subject when she was going through IVF treatment. This is very commendable. In this chapter, she also makes the very valid argument that society has a long way to go until it treats adults who have not had children for whatever reason with as much respect as parents. Her comments on unsolicited advice really struck me: ‘It’s almost as if, in being child-free yourself, you become everyone else’s child: someone who needs taking care of, who needs guiding in the right direction, who doesn’t quite understand, but bless her, she’s trying.’
Day offsets the more serious topics she explores in her book with light-hearted anecdotes about terrible first dates, her experience living out Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle for a week (vagina steaming and all!), and how her reluctance to say no to job opportunities resulted in her eating badger stew cooked by a somewhat ominous, self-entitled ‘Roadkill Chef.’ As a result, the book remains uplifting and heartening. It felt strangely cathartic reading about a stranger’s life experiences, and what they considered to be their failures. Many of the topics discussed resonated with me. Naturally, some of the chapters were more relevant to my life than others. In spite of this, I found every single chapter worthwhile, as it felt like an older, wiser woman understood some of my struggles, yet had her own unique story to tell.
I especially liked the chapter on friendship. Day offers advice about how to be compassionate to yourself when friendships fizzle out, and how to distinguish between true friendships and those that are more circumstantial. Day also (quite rightly) sees platonic relationships as equally important as romantic relationships. She reminds readers that friends share some of the most significant moments of your life with you, and highlights how her friends were there for her at times when some of her previous partners were not. This is such an important message, as it can be hard not to neglect other relationships when you have a romantic partner. However, it’s important not to abandon your friends, as they’re such a valuable support system and source of joy so I’m so glad this was a message Day promoted in her book.
Although it’s a greatly talked about topic, I am glad that Day discussed how social media encourages unhealthy comparison with others. Nowadays, we not only compare ourselves to our peers, but also to celebrities who live well beyond the means of most people, with personal trainers, plastic surgeons, and private chefs. She reminds readers that for celebrities, being beautiful is effectively a full-time job and that there are much better things to be doing with your time than obsessing over your appearance. I also appreciated how she touches on the subject of ageing, and how problematic it is that female youth is so celebrated and fetishized. Her thoughts on body positivity are very constructive. As someone who has frequently struggled with body image issues, Day’s approach was a revelation to me. She focuses on the beautiful complexity of the human body, and the respect we owe to our bodies for performing the biological processes that occur every single second to keep us alive. Instead of focusing on what we don’t like about ourselves and our imperfections, Day suggests that we should concentrate on all the wonderful things our bodies can do. I know this is easier said than done, but it was an outlook that I personally found useful.
Although most of the reviews I’ve read were very positive about How To Fail, a minority were rather critical. Some readers found Day’s writing to be narcissistic, self-indulgent, and accused her of assuming that the reader’s experiences were just like her own, and like those of celebrities. Others accused her of name-dropping and labelled her failures trite and hollow. Give the woman a break! Of course, not all of Day’s so-called failures will resonate with every reader and she is careful to acknowledge her privilege throughout the book. Moreover, she specifically explains that she doesn’t reference celebrities to name-drop, or because she thinks they have all the answers, but because she believes they have a particularly interesting insight into modern-day notions of success. As her interview with Robert Pattinson highlights, celebrities go through many of the same struggles as the average person. All of her references to celebrities were pertinent to the topic being discussed. As ‘failure’ is a subjective term, what one person deems to be a failure may be completely different from the next person. Moreover, failures don’t have to be ground-breaking to be meaningful to the individual. All failures are perfectly valid so I would have to disagree with the above criticism about the nature of Day’s failures.
Of course, this book is not a miracle cure. However, I believe this book did help to equip me to deal better with future failure. After reading How To Fail, I felt a bit more at ease with some of my own personal failings, although there are still some that I have yet to come to terms with. Indeed, this book evidently had an impact on me, for I started this blog partly because I felt empowered by Day’s writing. I had been procrastinating creating a blog for a solid year, largely due to my huge fear of failure. However, after reading this book, and with the encouragement of a few close friends and family members, I decided to bite the bullet. Overall, How To Fail was insightful, entertaining, and reassuringly honest. I would rate this book 4 stars out of 5.
I want to end this blog post by sharing a few of my favourite quotes from How To Fail:
‘How else could I have got to know myself, if not through my intimate interactions with the world, through my relationships with others? We do not exist in a vacuum. We exist in rhythms and melodies that can be harmonious or jarring or syncopated, played in major or minor chords, but the music has to be heard to make an impact. Sound becomes sound by bouncing off other surfaces.’
‘No experience is wasted, even if you have no idea of what a particular experience is teaching you during the time you’re enduring it.’
‘Friendship can give you the ultimate security of feeling known, seen, and cherished as you are.’
‘Twenty years of joy and support and friendship, that’s a success. Twenty years of anything with another person is a success. If a band stays together twenty years, it’s a miracle. If a comedy duo stays together twenty years, they’re a triumph. Is this night a failure because it will end in an hour? Is the sun a failure because it’s going to end in a billion years? No, it’s the fucking sun.’ (technically, I’m cheating a little because this quotation is from the novel Less by Andrew Sean Greer, although Day does quote it in her book. For context, the protagonist of Less has just been told that his friend’s marriage is ending after twenty years)
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