Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1)

by Lola Kirke

Overview

In this darkly humorous memoir-in-essays, actress and singer-songwriter Lola Kirke untangles an extraordinary upbringing in a family of eccentric, messy artists and explains how a big city girl went a little bit country.

The youngest daughter of a rock star father and clothing designer mother, Lola and her siblings (including actress Jemima and celebrity doula Domino), spent their childhoods freshly plucked from their English heritage in an eclectic West Village brownstone, hosting everyone from Cuban exiles to Courtney Love. But behind the enviable exterior of worldly coolness, was a home in disarray.

In Wild West Village, Kirke chronicles a search for self amidst the chaos of the affairs, addictions, and afflictions surrounding her, detailing misadventures in everything from masturbation to marijuana, Cadbury’s to country music, and a dream of salvation on the silver screen.

Filled with unforgettable characters and insights into identities forged in fire, Wild West Village locates humor and lightness in life’s darker situations. Irreverent and high-spirited, these are the stories of a young woman, teetering between a twang and a British accent, trying to fit in with larger-than-life personalities while secretly coming into her own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668035573
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	01/28/2025
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	422,167
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.38(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Lola Kirke is an acclaimed actress (Mistress America, Gone Girl, and Mozart in the Jungle) and singer-songwriter. Wild West Village is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

"Wildly entertaining, riotously funny and disarmingly self-aware. Wild West Village has all the tenets of a great country song: emotion, soul, and a damn good story. I devoured it in one delicous sitting and could have come back for more. Needless to say, I adored it."–Coco Mellors, New York Times bestselling author of Blue Sisters

“Lola Kirke has captured more than just her own wild and specific New York upbringing (one that resonates more profoundly than I’d like it to.) She has captured the yearning of a generation raised on seductive yet dangerous images of young starlets run amok, and her path through and out of these delusions of grandeur and into the grandeur of self. She is a wise, witty and unsparing writer and her memoir proves it in a voice as lovely as the one she uses to sing.” –LENA DUNHAM

"Probably the only book I'll read this year."—ZOE KRAVTIZ

“The West Village of Lola Kirke’s growing-up might as well be Narnia, so alternate was the glittering universe of her eccentric, bohemian family—and there’s no one I'd want to go through a wardrobe with more. These are great stories, but more, they are confidences shared: hilarious, heart-quickening, and wise.” –JOHN HODGMAN, author of Vacationland and host of the Judge John Hodgman podcast

“The searching and fearless moral inventory of my dreams: funny, totally self-aware, utterly delicious.” –EMMA FORREST, author of Your Voice in My Head

From the Publisher