Fiction Ruined My Family
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
"Beautifully paced . . . heartbreaking and hilarious."—USA Today
Augusten Burroughs meets Mary Karr: a deeply funny and wickedly entertaining family memoir.
The youngest of four daughters in an old, celebrated St. Louis family-- of prominent journalists and politicians on one side, debutantes and equestrians on the other-- Jeanne Darst grew up hearing stories of past grandeur. And the message she internalized as a young girl was clear: While things might be a bit tight for us right now, it’s only temporary. Soon her father would sell the Great American Novel and reclaim the family’s former glory.
The Darsts move from St. Louis to New York, and Jeanne’s father writes one novel, then another, which don’t find publishers. This, combined with her mother’s burgeoning alcoholism, lead to financial disaster and divorce. And as Jeanne becomes an adult, she is horrified to discover that she is not only a drinker like her mother, but a writer like her father. At first, and for years, she embraces both activities— and until she can stop putting drinking and writing ahead of everything else, it’s a questionable choice.
Ultimately, Darst sets out to discover whether a person can have the writing without the ruin, whether it’s possible to be both sober and creative, ambitious and happy, a professional author and a parent. Filled with brilliantly flawed, idiosyncratic characters and punctuated by Darst’s irreverent eye for absurdity, Fiction Ruined My Family is a lovingly told, wickedly funny portrait of an unconventional life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this memoir, freelance writer Darst has a brilliant eye for the absurd, sad, and often hilarious circumstances of her family life. Darst grew up as the youngest of four daughters. Her father, a lover of books and literature, came from a prestigious newspaper family. Her mother, a little rich girl, was a celebrated child equestrian. Yet Darst's childhood reality never enough money, "a stay-in-bed mom," and a stay-at-home writer dad didn't jibe with the golden family saga. The jarring discrepancy set the family up for disaster. The family left St. Louis for New York in 1976, where her father began writing the Great American Novel, which never sold. He stopped writing and merely talked about it, her mother's drinking increased, and Darst followed her example ("Her drinking was also completely out of control, which was infuriating, as I was trying to enjoy some out-of-control drinking myself"). Darst's parents divorced, and their lives took a further turn downward: her father is mistaken for a homeless panhandler and her mother becomes "less and less of a mother you could take out in public." With her own life a mess, Darst realizes she embodies the worst qualities of both her parents. With cutting language, she chronicles the perils and joys of the writing life and her journey toward sobriety and truth.
