Stray
A Memoir
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4.3 • 88 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of Sweetbitter, a memoir of growing up in a family shattered by lies and addiction, and of one woman's attempts to find a life beyond the limits of her past. Stray is a moving, sometimes devastating, brilliantly written and ultimately inspiring exploration of the landscapes of damage and survival.
After selling her first novel--a dream she'd worked long and hard for--Stephanie Danler knew she should be happy. Instead, she found herself driven to face the difficult past she'd left behind a decade ago: a mother disabled by years of alcoholism, further handicapped by a tragic brain aneurysm; a father who abandoned the family when she was three, now a meth addict in and out of recovery. After years in New York City she's pulled home to Southern California by forces she doesn't totally understand, haunted by questions of legacy and trauma. Here, she works toward answers, uncovering hard truths about her parents and herself as she explores whether it's possible to change the course of her history.
Lucid and honest, heart-breaking and full of hope, Stray is an examination of what we inherit and what we don't have to, of what we have to face in ourselves to move forward, and what it's like to let go of one's parents in order to find peace--and a family--of one's own.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Danler (Sweetbitter) returns to her hometown of Los Angeles and comes to a reckoning in this forceful, eviscerating memoir. Her three-part narrative Mother, Father, Monster creates a domino effect of abandonment and humiliation as those she loves topple her. "People often act against common sense when they've fallen in love with a fantasy," she writes, describing both the tumbledown Laurel Canyon cottage she rents with the advance on her first novel and her disillusionment with her parents and the married lover she calls the Monster. Danler, writing in precise, elegant prose, outlines her family's disintegration: her father left his wife, Danler, and her sister as young girls; her mother worked and raised the children as she slid into alcoholism and began to physically abuse her daughters. Sent to live with her disinterested father in Colorado, Danler quickly realized "he couldn't love anyone" yet "was charmed by his cruelty." Self-destructive relationships followed, including the unavailable Monster, "a colonizer... who declares ownership without concrete investment in the country." As the publication date of her debut novel drew near, a friend's comment "You fought so hard for this life and now you won't let yourself have it" propelled her to sever connections with all three and instead establish "tiny building blocks of trust" in loving, enduring relationships. The result is a penetrating and unforgettable tale of family dysfunction.
