★ 11/22/2021
Rowe (Sin Bravely), actor and television writer for shows including Arrested Development, proves that things aren’t always as they seem in this funny and touching memoir. Despite her happy marriage, successful career, and life on “a smooth road lined with jasmine” in L.A., she admits she’s had a bumpy run “beset by envy and petty rivalries of all kinds.” Plagued by her inner critic and battles with OCD, she relates how she came to resent anyone who had what she lacked—from Krista Tippett, host of NPR’s On Being (“Boy, did she play her cards right”) to even “wise old women on their deathbeds.” But those feelings took a turn when Rowe’s husband, former Golden Girls writer Jim Vallely, introduced her to Sunny and Joanna, a mother-daughter panhandling team who later became their close friends. While Rowe was initially skeptical of them, she traces how letting them in led to an intimate, at times tumultuous, relationship that began with a Golden Girls marathon and stretched over years and holidays singing ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” Eventually, their company led her to feel a fragile but real sense of contentment. Rowe’s bluntness about her mental health struggles, combined with her account of her imperfect but enduring dedication to Sunny and Joanna, makes for a heartstring-tugging and charming story. Readers will find it hard to put this one down. (Jan.)
"There is a magic in Maggie Rowe that is able to reveal the unsung beauty, art, grace, and humor of mental illness* (*along with the struggly, super shitty parts of mental illness.) Read this book." —Sarah Silverman
"A romp of profoundly funny self-revelation. This isn’t chick lit. It’s simply lit." —Bill Maher
"Poignant and often hilarious." —People
"Despite its heavy subject matter, Easy Street is loaded with humor . . . Rowe's keen, wry observations about life in Los Angeles say a lot about wealth, privilege, and class in the city." —Liz Ohanesian, Southern California News Group
"Rowe’s bluntness about her mental health struggles, combined with her account of her imperfect but enduring dedication to Sunny and Joanna, makes for a heartstring-tugging and charming story. Readers will find it hard to put this one down." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Rowe is a cleareyed, disarmingly honest, wonderfully funny narrator of this trial by fire, which almost seems to be a 'test' of the sort the hero faces in a fable or a Bible story, ironically set in one of the most self-involved places on Earth. If you've ever gotten in over your head trying to be a good person, get ready to wince, laugh, and scream. A great read." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An unexpected story of friendship . . . This is a compelling exploration of the obligations and limits of privilege." —Booklist
"Maggie manages to make each phrase of Easy Street more dynamic and incisive than the next. Her unsparing display of what she considers her own weaknesses brings in and includes the reader like an intimate confidante." —Joey Soloway
"Maggie's memoir is both moving and hilarious. It teems with truly indelible comic scenes—many of which jack-knife into poignant moments of crushingly honest self-revelation. Which are also funny. It's a story you'll neither be able to stop reading nor easily forget. I love this book. I could blurb all day about it." —Mitchell Hurwitz
"Easy Street is like donning a VR helmet and finding yourself in the middle of this amazing, moving story in real time. Pride, guilt, kindness, anger and comedy happen in dizzying succession. Easy Street is not a cloying tale of virtue-signalling do-goodery. Maggie virtually waterboards herself to get at the uncomfortable truths beneath her acts of kindness, which are often hidden even from herself. Yet with every ruthless admission of masked resentment or malice, she exposes not just herself, but all of us; we’re all presenting a curated self; we’re all acting nice. But Maggie Rowe is one of the few people brave enough to go excavating so deeply. An amazing book." —Peter Baynham
"Easy Street is a witty and charming memoir that reads like a buddy comedy. With thrilling and unflinching honesty, Maggie Rowe tackles the heavy stuff: mental illness, envy, and what the haves owe the have-nots. A laugh-out-loud book that makes you want to do better. I couldn’t put it down." —Maria Semple
"Similar to Truman Capote, Maggie Rowe writes like the most fascinating person at a dinner party who captivates the table with a strange, twisty, funny tale about the human condition. It’s incredibly difficult to describe losing your mind and Rowe does it masterfully and unflinchingly. Her tenderness and insight make you root for everyone, especially her. (Spoiler alert: kindness and love light the darkness.)" —Nell Scovell, author of Just the Funny Parts: And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking into the Hollywood Boys’ Club
"Easy Street had me laughing out loud from the very first sentence. Maggie Rowe’s captivating storytelling is not only a reflection on her personal life experiences, it is an enlightening exploration of the human mind. Shockingly honest, brilliantly funny, and imbued with deep wisdom and a touch of Buddhist philosophy, Easy Street is a masterful memoir." —Annaka Harris, New York Times bestselling author of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind
03/11/2022
Rowe (Sin Bravely) takes readers into another chapter of her life in this midlife memoir. A chance encounter brings a quirky mother and her adult daughter Joanna into their lives. Rowe will eventually become largely responsible for Joanna's affairs. But it isn't easy. Joanna is blunt, stubborn, and jealous of Rowe's life on "easy street" in a beautiful home with a loving husband—which she makes sure to point out she doesn't deserve. Rowe navigates this complicated relationship while confronting her privilege and sense of being as she struggles with her mental health. Readers of Rowe's previous works will appreciate her acerbic wit, mostly directed at herself, while tackling some dark subjects with forthrightness. Although not a necessarily uplifting read, many readers will be able to identify with the challenges that come with living in the modern world and keeping appearances while managing one's mental health. VERDICT Fans of Rowe's dark humor and previous memoir will enjoy the next chapter in her life. Caregivers and relations of semi-dependent adults and those struggling with mental health will identify with the tussle of making it through, day by day.—Kelly Karst
★ 2021-10-20
The acclaimed Hollywood writer’s second memoir, following the well-reviewed Sin Bravely(2017).
Rowe opens by explaining that even though she is blessed with a wonderful husband, career, and home in LA, she is tormented by "a seething system of covetous rivalries and discontents" as well as an insidious form of OCD called looping, which involves being unable to stop repeating a word or phrase in one's head—e.g., “Auschwitz.” “As the repeating voice gains confidence and asserts itself more boldly—Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz—the panic that creeps through my skin does not compare itself to any other,” she writes. These troubles might have been enough to keep her busy, but then her kindhearted husband, Jimmy, made two new friends, a mother and daughter panhandling outside a restaurant, both of whom were huge fans of his work as a writer on The Golden Girls. After several months, the author joined one of the trio's monthly lunches; not long after, she found herself watching a Golden Girlsmarathon with the ladies in her home. While the mother, Sunny, was a likable jokester with fairly normal boundaries, her middle-aged daughter, Joanna, was not. She had an elementary school education, poor personal hygiene, and numerous odd tics, obsessions, and fixations—among them, her ever growing crush on Handsome Jim, as she often referred to Rowe’s husband. As Sunny and Joanna's situation took several turns for the worse, the author took on increasing responsibilities for them. Jimmy, on the other hand, had his hands full taking care of his wife. Rowe is a cleareyed, disarmingly honest, wonderfully funny narrator of this trial by fire, which almost seems to be a "test" of the sort the hero faces in a fable or a Bible story, ironically set in one of the most self-involved places on Earth.
If you've ever gotten in over your head trying to be a good person, get ready to wince, laugh, and scream. A great read.
