The Woman in Me is a tough book to read, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is hard to read through the actual content of the book. Britney details incredible amounts of toxicity and abuse in her life from her family, her partners, and the media. It’s not really a book you can say you enjoyed reading, because it isn’t enjoyable, and nor should it be. It’s a harrowing read, and one that I can recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in Spears’s work. The other reason it is hard to read, however, is the actual writing style of the book. Given how prolific and talented a songwriter Spears is, I expected writing which was elegant and meaningful. This memoir is not that, at all. The prose is, quite honestly, simple and dull. This doesn’t make it particularly pleasant to read, but it is hard to fault the book because of this. She wrote this just after exiting a conservatorship which consumed over a decade of her adult life where she had no control over what she did. It is also fair to say that Spears is not highly educated, and the writing naturally reflects this. It is certainly authentic, which works in the book’s benefit.

The other major problem with the memoir is its detail and structure. Because this was written so soon after the conservatorship, it’s clear that Spears still hasn’t processed a lot of that period of her life. Reading this book often feels like skim-reading a wikipedia article: there’s enough in there for you to get the gist of what was happening and how she felt, but if you’re after any insider details, you don’t get a lot here. Much of it feels quite shallow, and the best parts are Spears’s recollections of her memories. For the most part, though, it’s a simple “this happened, then this happened. This happened, then this happened”. Additionally, timeframes are often not presented and the overall narrative can get confused as a result (particularly if, like me, you are unfamiliar with Spears’s life more broadly). For example, at one point she discusses working with Justin Timberlake. She describes how she had a massive crush on him, which most young women at the time probably did. Then she talks about how they were living together, with no connection between these two events. At some point, she had a crush, the next moment, they’re together. How did they get together? These details are left out. Later in the book, she casually mentions how, before the conservatorship, she was paying her father money to do some work for her. But throughout most of the book he is rarely mentioned after her upbringing, there’s no discussion over why she hired him or for what. I felt these were crucial details to leave out, as her father’s lust for power and wealth seems to be a major factor in his establishment of the conservatorship, but again, we are left wondering about how he came to be in that powerful position to begin with. It feels a bit like a sparknotes version of her life: you get enough of the basics to get by, but the detail is lacking.

If it sounds like I didn’t like it, that’s not true. I think it’s worth re-classifying the book as less of an autobiography or memoir as we commonly think of them, and instead approach this as a reflective piece of writing on her life, written in the wake of a particularly traumatic period. When you approach the book this way, it’s a fascinating and harrowing read, one which engages the reader fully and provides insight into Spears’s mindset in particular. I have no doubt that in the future we’ll get more autobiographies and biographies on Spears’s life, and I suspect we will get more of the interesting details in there. To be clear, it’s not just the details of, for instance, the conservatorship. It’s also the details of, say, creative process with music or acting. There’s pockets of this throughout the book, but again in little detail. The book feels slightly unfocused because of this, trying to talk about her whole life, and not going into much detail about any particular part. These will come in the future, I think. For now, this memoir is one which provides that insight into her life after a traumatic experience, and for that reason alone, I think it is worth reading.

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