Ivy Briefs: True Tales of a Neurotic Law Student Book Review

Ivy Briefs: True Tales of a Neurotic Law Student, written by Martha Kimes, is a memoir about a Midwestern girl being accepted to Columbia Law School, and all the experiences that follow. Many reviewers compared this book to One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School by Scott Turow, which I have never read but sounds interesting. Hopefully it's more interesting than Kimes' book, anyway.

Ivy Briefs is not a bad book and it got off to an acceptable start. Kimes begins as a likable, if a bit generic, narrator and protagonist. She starts off the book playing up the fact that she was from a unrenowned university in Wisconsin and she's astonished that she's made it into Columbia. Her self-effacing attitude does make her kind of endearing. In addition, her characterizations of some of the more egotistic law students are humorous and from what I understand, pretty dead on.

However, the book begins to lag as she gets into the next couple chapters. Now, I've never been to law school, nor have I ever been particularly interested in going. I picked up this book because I enjoy learning about walks of life that are foreign to me. I'd imagine that if I were seriously interested in law school, I would have found this book more engaging. As the case was, though, her stories about her classes and teachers and workload were pretty bland. Not bad, just not terribly interesting.

The title, too, is somewhat of a misnomer. I've met neurotic people; I'm neurotic, in fact. Kimes is not neurotic. She's just a little stressed out and nervous about law school; she actually seems pretty normal overall. Guess which one is more interesting? I was expecting her to be a little weirder. It would have made the book far more exciting, so that was disappointing. I guess titles like "True Tales of a Normal, Albeit Stressed Out, Law Student" just don't sell as well. Even her persona as "a naive small-town girl" (as quoted on the front jacket) seems to only briefly come into play in the beginning. I think all of that was more of a selling point than a real truth.

I think what bothered me most about this book was that there was no real conflict, no rising action, no climax. Basically, it consisted of a bunch of little stories about her going to classes, and studying for tests, and freaking out about the tests, and going to work. But even within these smaller stories, everything was always fine; there were no real obstacles, so it was hard to care about her life. And hey, you know the only thing more boring than studying for and taking tests? Reading about someone else doing it. I mean, she spends an entire chapter just going on and on about studying for and taking the bar exam.

Kimes does her best to make this book more interesting by trying to spice it up with humor. Unfortunately, her humor seems to be a watered-down version of generic memoir humor: little self-deprecating stories, some irony, a bit of tongue-in-cheek comedy. So yeah, there are a few funny moments. Well, more cute than funny. But nothing uproariously hilarious for sure, and most of it just felt like it'd be done before.

And finally, Kimes becomes less and less likable as the book goes on. Towards the end, she gets a taste of money and privilege and begins sounding like the spoiled law students she started out making fun of. She never gets as bad as them, but it seems as though she's definitely going down that path. For example, in one of the final chapters, she ends up working a short stint as a Family Court Advocate for the mandatory pro-bono work all students are required to do. She speaks of it only distastefully, beginning with her initial impressions: "Ick. This looks more like the inside of an underperforming urban elementary school than a courtroom. Judge Lovell's courtroom didn't look anything like this. His courtroom had plush, patterned carpet and rich mahogany benches. Here, I'm stuck in this wobbly plastic chair for an entire week" (Kimes, 237).

Not only that, but she really lost me when (and maybe this is just one of my personal pet peeves) she was trying to pick out her final classes and said: "Feminist Theory Workshop? No. I was a firm believer in shaving my legs on a regular basis" (Kimes, 214). Now, I could write an entire other article about this, but I'll try to keep it brief. First of all, as a leg-shaving feminist, I hate the stereotypes that come with feminism, such as you have to be this way or that way to be a feminist. I know plenty of hair-dying, leg-shaving, makeup-wearing feminists. I know plenty of male feminists. To quote the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, feminism is: "The doctrine - and the political movement based on it - that women should have the same economic, social, and political rights as men." Right, the same movement that's responsible for the cultural shift that allowed Kimes to be where she is today. (But wait-where's the part of the definition that says feminists have to be angry, hairy man-haters?) To flippantly disparage feminism and promote ridiculous stereotypes, especially as a female writer and lawyer, is just irresponsible and ignorant.

However, before closing, I want to say that I may have been too hard on this book. As I initially stated, it wasn't a bad book. It was fairly well written, and written in an accessible style. It wasn't completely lacking humor. Kimes was not a deplorable narrator. Part of is just that I've read a lot of memoirs, so the amazing ones have ruined the curve for all the rest of them. Another part of it is that I just didn't really relate to the subject matter, so it wasn't as interesting to me. And a third part of it is that the feminist comment really pissed me off. Anyway, I would recommend this book to those interested in studying law. I just wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.

Citations:

Kimes, Martha. Ivy Briefs: True Tales of a Neurotic Law Student. New York: Astria Books, 2007.

"feminism." The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. 31 Oct. 2008. .