Let's Never Talk About This Again
A Memoir
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Samantha Irby meets Bettyville in this darkly funny and poignant memoir about love, loss, Alzheimer's, and reviving her father's pornographic writing career, from writer and Mortified liveproducer Sara Faith Alterman.
Twelve-year-old Sara enjoyed an G-rated existence in suburban New England, filled with over-the-top birthday cakes, Revolutionary War reenactments, and nerdy word games invented by her prudish father, Ira. But Sara's world changed for the icky when she discovered that Ira had been shielding her from the truth: that he was a campy sex writer who'd sold millions of books in multiple languages, including the wildly popular Games You Can Play with Your Pussy. Which was, to the naïve Sara's horror, not a book about cats. For decades the books remained an unspoken family secret, until Ira developed early onset Alzheimer's disease . . . and announced he'd be reviving his writing career. With Sara's help.
In this cringeworthy, hilarious, and moving memoir, Sara shares the profound experience of discovering new facets of her father; once as a child, and again as an adult. Let's Never Talk About This Again is a must-read confessional from a woman who spent years trying to find humor in the perverse and optimism in the darkness, and succeeded.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this entertaining memoir, Alterman (Tears of a Class Clown), a writer and producer for the Mortified podcast, writes of her attempt to make sense of her father's secret pornographic writing career. While exploring the bookshelves in the family den known affectionately as the "Duck Room" (so named for its duck-themed decor) 12-year-old Alterman makes the startling discovery that her father, Ira, is the author of such books as Games You Can Play with Your Pussy (which, much to Alterman's surprise, is not about cats) and Bridget's Sexual Fantasies. She keeps her discovery to herself for 25 years, until Ira, at age 64, loses his job as a development and marketing executive in Boston and informs Alterman that he is reviving his writing career and needs her help with a book inspired by her wedding, tentatively titled The Naughty Bride. What follows is a funny, tender, and compassionate narrative in which Alterman while living and working on the West Coast and starting her own family helps her parents navigate this new phase of Ira's life amid his declining mental capabilities due to Alzheimer's. It is only after her father dies that Alterman comes to terms with his pornographic side gig ("I'll always have unanswered questions about who he really was, and why he hid it from me, and whether I'm just being way dramatic about some campy books that aren't a big deal to anyone but me"). Entertaining, moving, and at times uncomfortable, this will especially resonate with those caring for an aging parent.
