ON BECOMING ME

In this debut memoir, a California teen navigates high school, college, and love.

From 1977 to 1986, Hegberg Pursell kept a diary—or rather several diaries, with names ranging from The Red Diary to The Diary I Called Jennifer to The Last One—in which she chronicled her every thought, feeling, and problem. When she was 10, the entries were short and sweet, about crushes and swim practice. As the years go by, they become more complex as she makes her way through junior high, high school, and early college and experiences the familiar joys, trials, and tribulations that accompany each phase of a suburban California girl’s life. An accomplished swimmer in her younger years, Hegberg Pursell struggled with a shoulder injury and a rigorous training and competition schedule. Later, she wrestled with debilitating mental illness that threatened her plans for the future as well as issues with her family, such as the fact that her father was frequently away on business. She wrote about friends, part-time jobs, and many, many boys. She and her friends puzzled their way through first love, and she writes about crushes and more serious relationships. Through it all, she developed and honed a passion for writing, especially poetry. This is Hegberg Pursell’s first nonfiction book after publishing two novels, the most recent of which wasHarvard(2021). Along with diary entries, it contains an introduction and epilogue as well as occasional interludes from her adult self, effectively providing additional context and details. Because the author came of age in the late 1970s and early ’80s, the nostalgic pop-culture references are plentiful and often delightful to read. However, the work, as roughly 300 pages of transcribed diaries, would have benefited from a stronger edit to streamline the text into a more cohesive story. As it is, it frequently recounts mundane, everyday details that are often less than compelling.

A sometimes-engaging but overlong set of journals.