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Fiction Ruined My Family
Jeanne Darst
Riverhead Books
October 2011
On Sale: September 29, 2011
336 pages
ISBN: 1594488142
EAN: 9781594488146
Kindle: B0054TVWJA
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
The youngest of four daughters in an old, celebrated St.
Louis family of prominent journalists and politicians on one
side, debutante balls and equestrian trophies on the other,
Jeanne Darst grew up hearing stories of past grandeur. And
as a young girl, the message she internalized 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 family uproots and moves from St. Louis to New York.
Jeanne's father writes one novel, and then another, which
don't find publishers. This, combined with her mother's
burgeoning alcoholism -- nightly booze- fueled weepathons
reminiscing about her fancy childhood -- 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 - living in an
apartment with no bathroom, stealing food from her
babysitting gigs, and raising rent money by riding the
subway topless, or performing her one woman show in her
living room. Until gradually, she realizes that this life
has not been thrust on her in some
handing-down-of-the-writing-mantle-way. She has chosen it;
and until she can stop putting drinking and writing ahead of
everything else, it's a questionable choice. She writes,
"For a long time I was worried about becoming my father.
Then I was worried about becoming my mother. Now I was
worried about becoming myself." Ultimately, Jeanne sets out to discover if a person can have
the writing without the ruin, if 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.
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