The New York Times Book Review - Molly Brodak
Two very short sections open Leah Carroll's memoir: the description of her mother's murder in a seedy hotel room, and the description of her father's death in an equally seedy hotel room 14 years later. Carroll proceeds from these haunting twin plot points through a patchwork of vignettes, reportage and reflection that reaches after her absent parents with sensitive longing…Carroll's writing is most evocative when she describes, with a heartbreaking mixture of tenderness and disappointment, the moments of intimate connection between her and her father, her struggle to enjoy spending time with him even as she knows she will later find him drunk and helpless on the kitchen floor.
From the Publisher
"Carroll proceeds from these haunting twin plot points [her parents' deaths] through a patchwork of vignettes, reportage and reflection that reaches after her absent parents with sensitive longing.... Carroll's writing is most evocative when she describes, with a heartbreaking mixture of tenderness and disappointment, the moments of intimate connection between her and her father."—New York Times Book Review
"Leah Carroll's DOWN CITY drops us into a family story heavy with secrets and crackling with regret. Hers is a portrait of two parents straining desperately to find their better angels, and a daughter whose resilience is tested again and again. The fact that she proves herself both survivor and frank and generous curator of their story is a great gift, both to their memory and to readers alike."—Megan Abbott, bestselling author of The Fever and You Will Know Me
"Carroll grasps fleeting moments and memories with confidence and disarming delicacy....So rich in mood, feeling, and genuine love, this investigative memoir is a true tribute."—Booklist (starred review)
"Leah Carroll's writing is vivid and honest, and DOWN CITY is a clear-eyed act of regaining a father by artfully cataloging his loss."—Charles Graeber, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder
"Quick and clear as glass, evocative and engaging, DOWN CITY is a story of a daughter's moving search for the truth about the parents whose dark complexities have left a mystery at the center of her existence."—George Hodgman, author of Bettyville
"Leah Carroll's Rhode Island is seedy, charismatic, broke-down, and irresistible: so much like the characters in her gripping heartbreak of a memoir. Only a writer as brave in her heart as she is on the page could make us love the ghosts she chases through police reports, memory, and the desolate landmarks of her own tragedy. Leah Carroll is that writer, proving that no matter who haunts you or for how long, only forgiveness can set you free."—Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me
"Raw and crushing . . . a thoroughly reported, deeply personal memoir."—The Village Voice
"Crushing to read and intensely readable."—The Wall Street Journal
"Driven by a ferocious demand for justice, Leah Carroll takes us with her as she extricates herself from layer after layer of lies, determined not only to find but to understand the truth about her parents' tragic lives. DOWN CITY is a riveting and heartbreaking inquiry, born of inner necessity, and written in a deceptively simple and deeply affecting prose that elevates its storytelling to art."—Richard Hoffman, author of Half the House and Love & Fury
"Carroll's understated prose complements this daunting material, and her struggles as an unhappy, rebellious teen seem almost idyllic in contrast to the dysfunction and tragedy that shadow her... Carroll's determined grappling with the burden of her past is honestly and skillfully done."—Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
Carroll's quietly powerful story offers a courageous, cleareyed vision of a broken family while exploring the meaning of forgiveness. An honest and probing memoir of coming to terms with family.—Kirkus
"Beautiful and rich....It's an emotional, high stakes ride as Leah discovers her mother's love for life, talent for photography, and the drug addiction that ultimately let to her murder. Leah's prose is beautiful, rich and dark. With each turn of the page you find yourself laughing...then feeling truly broken for Leah....Leaves the reader nostalgic and in awe."—Providence Monthly
"Tough and dreamy, searching and sad, this debut memoir by a collateral victim of murder delves deep."—Library Journal
School Library Journal
01/01/2018
It can't have been easy growing up the daughter of a cocaine addict who was executed in a sordid hit sanctioned by the Rhode Island mob in 1984. Carroll's memoir reveals the scarring effect of losing her mother, a petite Jewish woman who loved her child, photography, dogs, and drugs. The motherless four-year-old grew into a writer who pursued the truth about the murder, which was sloppily prosecuted by a system more interested in evidence of organized crime than justice. Carroll combines information she learned from police, court, and medical examiner records with anecdotes and family revelations about Joan Carroll. Carroll's father had issues of his own, namely his struggles with alcohol. Kevin Carroll was a trusted and charismatic longtime employee of the Providence Journal, but Leah, world-weary and skeptical by the age of 18, wasn't shocked when her father was found dead in a flophouse. Carroll's clear writing is authentic, but her tale is not as arresting as other memoirs of growing up victimized, such as Cylin and John Busby's The Year We Disappeared or Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle. Still, this one will find an audience among young adults. VERDICT Recommend to readers of gritty true crime or memoirs of hard-luck childhoods.—Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Gwinnett County, GA
Kirkus Reviews
2016-12-26
A debut memoirist tells the story of her mother's brutal murder and her difficult relationship with her father, who followed his wife to the grave 14 years later.When Carroll was 4 years old, police discovered the body of her mother, Joan, on the side of the highway. Fourteen years later, they found her father, Kevin, who had died from an enlarged heart and liver disease, in a room in a cheap Rhode Island hotel. The question of who her parents were and how they had come to such tragic ends haunted Carroll into adulthood. Determined to find answers, she scoured her memory, newspaper accounts, and police records for clues and interviewed people who had known them both. Carroll speculates that her cocaine-addicted mother got involved with drugs through her father, a man who may have given Joan pills from the "collection" he took to manage mental illness. Joan's addiction eventually led to ties with the Mafia drug lord who killed her out of fear she would turn him in to the police. Not long after his first wife's death, Kevin remarried and moved the family from Providence to Barrington, an upscale Rhode Island town that made them all feel "normal and wealthy and safe." Yet alcoholism and manic depression took their tolls. Kevin and his new wife eventually divorced, while Carroll moved between homes and through high school in a haze of angst-ridden confusion. Yet it was after her father's death that she was finally able to "reinvent [herself] as wholesome, and capable" and begin the long, difficult task of making sense of her family's tragic history. Unsentimental and simply told, Carroll's quietly powerful story offers a courageous, cleareyed vision of a broken family while exploring the meaning of forgiveness. An honest and probing memoir of coming to terms with family.
