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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
4.5 stars. A slow, deliberate, and beautiful memoir that hooked me immediately. I was impressed by her descriptions of childhood, the detail of her memories (and how hard it must have been to write about those memories) and was struck in particular by the compassion & respect with which she wrote about so many difficult people and their behaviour.
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
This really took me by surprise. The premise sounded interesting—part true crime, part unconventional/dysfunctional family story—and I expected it to be a quick, light read. It is most certainly neither quick nor light, and it's also not very heavy on the true crime. This is a memoir but it read more like auto fiction or literary fiction, and while it had a slow pace, there were sections I read in which I couldn't put the book down. This was basically a very sad but also very interesting narrative of the author's childhood being passed to various relatives (her mother was murdered when she was a baby) and eventually ending up living on a boat with her grandfather and his wife, whose livelihood was running a porn shop. A lot of chapters devote a good deal of page space to the minutiae of her everyday life and I found myself saying at times "why do I care about this?", but once I got used to the author's brand of storytelling, it really clicked for me, and oftentimes the minutiae were important and proved to be dots that would later be connected. The writing and her descriptions of setting and the objects of her life painted very vivid images in my mind. There were many scenes that really moved me and that were heavy with symbolism. The cast of quirky, wayward people in her orbit growing up were also really entertaining, but sad. I identified with a lot of the author's childhood struggles and anxieties, despite having grown up in much more stable conditions, and I felt a sort of catharsis or at least solidarity while reading this. I can go on and on but I really enjoyed this and was really moved by her story and the characters in her life.
Rating: Rave
(I use the BookMarks by LitHub rating scale—Rave, Positive, Mixed, Pan—which express my opinion about a book better than a star rating can)
Rating: Rave
(I use the BookMarks by LitHub rating scale—Rave, Positive, Mixed, Pan—which express my opinion about a book better than a star rating can)
3.5 stars. This is "The Glass Castle" as a single child on a boat.
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
I thought this was ok. Obviously everyone is entitled to chronicle their remembrances however they'd like, but to me it felt like this particular story lacked much of a narrative and the anecdotes were pretty disjointed. Also, the incredibly emotional grappling with her mother's murder happened WAY late in the book and felt rushed to me.
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
sad
slow-paced
Honest, poignant and hopeful. The author’s style is so natural and evokes such emotion that you feel you were walking alongside her. Personally, her story inspires me. As a child whose parents were killed suddenly, I’ve spent years trying to “fill in the blanks.” Kelly fills her blanks with love. It’s a path I will now follow.
Kelly was always told when she was growing up that where she comes from is what makes her who she is.
Raised by her grandfather, “Sir Richard,” and his much younger wife, Kelly believed for most of her childhood that her mother had been killed in a car accident. One day, just before a retired police investigator meets her family at a nice restaurant for brunch, she learns that was never true.
Kelly’s life is rife with half-truths and mysteries, many of them never completely understood until she was well into adulthood. Some relatives that were once prominent in her life no longer have anything to do with her, while others from her early childhood, not even related to her, keep their relationship for years. Her upbringing was unconventional, although she didn’t realize the degree of its unorthodoxy until she was much older.
Kelly grew up with her grandparents, living on a small houseboat in California. The boat dock was full of other run-down, barely-seaworthy craft inhabited by drug addicts and petty criminals. Numerous cats ran around the boat, Kelly had to know how to work pumps and mechanical equipment, and there was a constant fear of electrical fires. Despite her unease, she still had to get up for school every morning, often wondering if someone would show up to bring her home. She attended a private French school, was introduced to haute cuisine and literature by her grandfather, and yet they often barely had enough money to make repairs to the boat. She was embarrassed wearing her school uniform, worried that it made her look snobby around the almost-homeless people who lived around her.
What touched me about Kelly’s memoir is, although we had completely disparate childhoods, her interpretation of her surroundings as a child was very much like mine. She was often afraid of things that were beyond her control: people she loved getting sick, or those people leaving her. She was burdened with feelings of guilt when someone she loved, mainly her grandfather, behaved in ways that made her feel embarrassed or ashamed.
To add to the confusion and mayhem of growing up on the boat, Kelly’s grandparents’ main source of income came from running a porn store. Her childhood introductions to sex involved images of violence and domination, and her grandfather’s cavalier attitude to discussing inappropriate subjects only added to her bewilderment. The porn store had to be kept a secret from her peers, and she certainly could never bring friends home. The people in her life were unpredictable and often temperamental. Nothing, not even her house, was stable.
Despite the insecure and seedy environment in which she grew up, Kelly comes to realize that the denizens of the docks took on some of the responsibility of raising her, giving her the advice and love that she needed in their own way. And always lingering in the background was her mom, Kelly wondering about her likes and dislikes, her personality, if she loved her baby. This book was fascinating and tragic, funny and also wretched. Kelly’s story is unusual and insightful, a highly recommended memoir.
My thanks to Sourcebooks and Netgalley for this advance copy in exchange for my honest review.
Raised by her grandfather, “Sir Richard,” and his much younger wife, Kelly believed for most of her childhood that her mother had been killed in a car accident. One day, just before a retired police investigator meets her family at a nice restaurant for brunch, she learns that was never true.
Kelly’s life is rife with half-truths and mysteries, many of them never completely understood until she was well into adulthood. Some relatives that were once prominent in her life no longer have anything to do with her, while others from her early childhood, not even related to her, keep their relationship for years. Her upbringing was unconventional, although she didn’t realize the degree of its unorthodoxy until she was much older.
Kelly grew up with her grandparents, living on a small houseboat in California. The boat dock was full of other run-down, barely-seaworthy craft inhabited by drug addicts and petty criminals. Numerous cats ran around the boat, Kelly had to know how to work pumps and mechanical equipment, and there was a constant fear of electrical fires. Despite her unease, she still had to get up for school every morning, often wondering if someone would show up to bring her home. She attended a private French school, was introduced to haute cuisine and literature by her grandfather, and yet they often barely had enough money to make repairs to the boat. She was embarrassed wearing her school uniform, worried that it made her look snobby around the almost-homeless people who lived around her.
What touched me about Kelly’s memoir is, although we had completely disparate childhoods, her interpretation of her surroundings as a child was very much like mine. She was often afraid of things that were beyond her control: people she loved getting sick, or those people leaving her. She was burdened with feelings of guilt when someone she loved, mainly her grandfather, behaved in ways that made her feel embarrassed or ashamed.
To add to the confusion and mayhem of growing up on the boat, Kelly’s grandparents’ main source of income came from running a porn store. Her childhood introductions to sex involved images of violence and domination, and her grandfather’s cavalier attitude to discussing inappropriate subjects only added to her bewilderment. The porn store had to be kept a secret from her peers, and she certainly could never bring friends home. The people in her life were unpredictable and often temperamental. Nothing, not even her house, was stable.
Despite the insecure and seedy environment in which she grew up, Kelly comes to realize that the denizens of the docks took on some of the responsibility of raising her, giving her the advice and love that she needed in their own way. And always lingering in the background was her mom, Kelly wondering about her likes and dislikes, her personality, if she loved her baby. This book was fascinating and tragic, funny and also wretched. Kelly’s story is unusual and insightful, a highly recommended memoir.
My thanks to Sourcebooks and Netgalley for this advance copy in exchange for my honest review.
This book was selected by my book discussion group and I knew very little about the story before I dove in. At first I really, really disliked the book (which may have had more to do with the audiobook narrator) and I spend the first quarter of the book shouting in my head, "Who cares? What makes you special or relevant to my life in any way?????" Then around chapter 17, I realized that I turned a corner and really did care, and I was hooked.
The little I knew about Kelly's story before reading the book was that it was going to be another one of those sad dysfunctional upbringing stories. This is not the case in my opinion. This is more a story of an unconventional childhood.
The author's writing is insightful and in the end I felt her adolescence would ring true to many women who can relate to her issues with body image, wondering if they are truly loved, and uncertain of who they truly are. Kelly's coming to terms with loving the imperfect people in her life was particularly poignant.
I didn't give the book all five stars only because I didn't enjoy the narrator and the story's non-chronological timeline was a bit confusing at times. Otherwise I would highly recommend this books that may not be high on other people's "To Read" lists.
The little I knew about Kelly's story before reading the book was that it was going to be another one of those sad dysfunctional upbringing stories. This is not the case in my opinion. This is more a story of an unconventional childhood.
The author's writing is insightful and in the end I felt her adolescence would ring true to many women who can relate to her issues with body image, wondering if they are truly loved, and uncertain of who they truly are. Kelly's coming to terms with loving the imperfect people in her life was particularly poignant.
I didn't give the book all five stars only because I didn't enjoy the narrator and the story's non-chronological timeline was a bit confusing at times. Otherwise I would highly recommend this books that may not be high on other people's "To Read" lists.
dark
emotional
medium-paced