FEBRUARY 2012 - AudioFile
Darst’s family was ruined not only by failed writing careers but also by alcoholism, depression, and lots of bad behavior. She gives the sometimes dire tale of her coming-of-age a mostly black comic spin, often with a tone of wry bitterness or self-deprecation. Her voice is strong and likable and her energy engaging; furthermore, she narrates with an actor’s skill for pacing, nuance, and expression. She provides her family members with distinctive voices, though we occasionally get lost among her three sisters. She wisely, or sensitively, drops the humorous tone when the story gets really sad. Darst delivers her often affecting story with enough clarity, charm, feeling, and humor to win the sympathy of listeners who are not too dismayed by the drinking, swearing, scatology, sex, and general misery. W.M. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Janet Maslin
…[a] winningly snarky memoir…
—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
In this memoir, freelance writer Darst has a brilliant eye for the absurd, sad, and often hilarious circumstances of her family life. Darst grew up as the youngest of four daughters. Her father, a lover of books and literature, came from a prestigious newspaper family. Her mother, a little rich girl, was a celebrated child equestrian. Yet Darst’s childhood reality—never enough money, “a stay-in-bed mom,” and a stay-at-home writer dad—didn’t jibe with the golden family saga. The jarring discrepancy set the family up for disaster. The family left St. Louis for New York in 1976, where her father began writing the Great American Novel, which never sold. He stopped writing and merely talked about it, her mother’s drinking increased, and Darst followed her example (“Her drinking was also completely out of control, which was infuriating, as I was trying to enjoy some out-of-control drinking myself”). Darst’s parents divorced, and their lives took a further turn downward: her father is mistaken for a homeless panhandler and her mother becomes “less and less of a mother you could take out in public.” With her own life a mess, Darst realizes she embodies the worst qualities of both her parents. With cutting language, she chronicles the perils and joys of the writing life and her journey toward sobriety and truth. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
"Beautifully paced . . . heartbreaking and hilarious."—USA Today
"Fiction Ruined My Family reads like a script for performance art, a rapid stand-up routine, careless and wisecracky, signaling moments for the audience to respond to a punch line by clapping. The tinkle of glasses subsides; the performer makes a grimace, takes a bow, goes on. Yet genuine pain is explored - for the dangerous ambitions of fame and achievement and the really dangerous distractions of carelessness with loved ones."—The San Francisco Chronicle
"[A] winningly snarky memoir."—The New York Times
"The girl's got flair."—Entertainment Weekly
"Jeanne Darst's memoir about growing up in a hard-drinking family with big literary dreams is hilarious, heartbreaking, and inspiring."—Marie Claire
"In her memoir Fiction Ruined My Family, Jeanne Darst plunges into the story of her delusional family with wicked wit and fearlessness."—Redbook
"High fives to Jeanne Darst for Fiction Ruined My Family, her tale of surviving an alkie blue-blood mom, a hard-drinking failed-writer dad, and her own inebriated performer/playwright/crummy-job dysfunction to write this seriously comic tell-all about her entanglements, with family, friend, and-of course-her bodacious self."—Elle
“Fiction Ruined My Family had me laughing out loud, which I almost never do, with one jaw-dropping scene after another. On nearly every page there’s some sentence that's so perfect, in an old-school Oscar Wilde/Dorothy Parker sort of way, that it made everything I've ever written or said seem like dull, drunken mumbling.” – Ira Glass, host of This American Life
“Jeanne Darst’s memoir unfolds like a Eugene O’Neill play, with all the boozing and the weeping and the exclamatory self-pity. Only it’s also very funny, and it has a happy ending (more or less). Snap this book up.”—Tad Friend, author of Cheerful Money
“As Tolstoy might have said if he'd survived the 1970s, happy families are all alike but every narcissistic parent is narcissistic in his or her own way. Jeanne Darst tells a story not only of family neuroses, artistic delusions and thwarted dreams but also of the nuances of social class, the tension between domesticity and bohemenianism, and the tragicomedy that comes from faking it but never quite making it. All my favorite themes! I also laughed out loud more times than I can count.”—Meghan Daum, author of My Misspent Youth and Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House
“Jeanne Darst is funnier than a blotto WASP in a Lily Pulitzer wheelchair.”—Wendy Burden, author of Dead End Gene Pool
“In the tradition of the Mitford sisters' chronicles (but minus Hitler), Fiction Ruined My Family is both a very funny tragedy and a very sad comedy.”—Patricia Marx, author of Him Her Him Again and the End of Him
“Dazzlingly funny, gut wrenching and infested with writing that will absolutely floor you. Fiction Ruined My Family has ruined me—how will I ever be able to use those adjectives again and mean them as much as I do now?”—Sloane Crosley, author of How Did You Get This Number
“Jeanne Darst manages to evoke humor and despair in a single sentence. I found myself rooting so hard for her. Fiction Ruined My Family is a great testament to surviving and overcoming wacky parents. A wonderful book.” – Julie Klam, author of You Had Me at Woof
FEBRUARY 2012 - AudioFile
Darst’s family was ruined not only by failed writing careers but also by alcoholism, depression, and lots of bad behavior. She gives the sometimes dire tale of her coming-of-age a mostly black comic spin, often with a tone of wry bitterness or self-deprecation. Her voice is strong and likable and her energy engaging; furthermore, she narrates with an actor’s skill for pacing, nuance, and expression. She provides her family members with distinctive voices, though we occasionally get lost among her three sisters. She wisely, or sensitively, drops the humorous tone when the story gets really sad. Darst delivers her often affecting story with enough clarity, charm, feeling, and humor to win the sympathy of listeners who are not too dismayed by the drinking, swearing, scatology, sex, and general misery. W.M. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
