Bed / by David Whitehouse

The 45th birthday of Malcolm "Mal" Ede's life marks twenty years since he climbed into his bed, his childhood bed, the one at his parents' home, and never left it. He now weighs over half a ton and his bed is now three beds--two king-sized and one single--tied together. Even though Mal can't get out of bed, can't even move, he really doesn't want to. He's satisfied to stay put, a choice which has attracted some oddly favorable attention. His condition has fostered a sort of perverse notoriety with a cult of followers convinced he's making a bold statement about modern life. Meanwhile his family, his mother and father, younger brother and fledgling girlfriend, passively stand by, observing the "truck-size block of sausage meat packed into a pair of cheap tights" that he's become.

Why won't he get out of bed? As a child, Mal was always the one who "liked to be the first to do things", the one with the wondrous curiosity about life who never felt that anything abnormal was unacceptable. He'd stand in the rain all day staring upwards until catching pneumonia. He'd go nude for hours, sometimes days at a time, refusing to wear clothes, even on outings to the supermarket or the park. And while his father, a morosely put-upon figure--"Dad didn't work, he toiled"--cursed his son's peculiarities and made solid attempts to rectify his behavior, he lost too many battles to Mal's willful insistence. The boy just wouldn't conform to standards; he loved the novelty of different experiences. But over time as the whimsicalities of childhood gave way to the mundane responsibilities of adulthood, Mal's spirits faded and his spunky resolve to live differently turned to disillusionment. Any incentive to live at all promptly went with it. His ultimate decision to remain in bed permanently, an act much enabled by his incredibly accommodating mother, was simply a reaction to what was expected of him as he grew older. The situation hasn't been popular with everyone of course. Along with his father, Mal's younger brother, who used to love but now loathes his morbidly obese counterpart, can't help but wish ill on his elder sibling--"Mal's death is the only thing that can save this family because his life has destroyed it".

With a well-crafted story narrated in first person by the protagonist's unnamed younger brother, Whitehouse has debuted a novel which is not only rich in acerbic wit and humor, but soul-searching in its existential implications. Bed isn't all satire, nor is it a serious allegory or gimmicky fable. It's a subtly poetic anecdotal piece highlighted by the obligations of familial love under extreme circumstances. As the narrator jumps back and forth in time, relating how all of this came about, we're introduced to a family very much like any other middle class English household where the natural developmental characteristics of children failed to apply to someone. Mal's condition (note the pun on the name) may be clinical depression or some other mental disorder (Peter Pan Syndrome possibly) though it's never indicated. But details of his life, the origins of his behavioral irregularities and his steadfast determination to remain immobile aren't so odd as to warrant exclusive attention. Mal's simply a product of his own, sound choices and his family's the affected party, something the book elucidates with incredibly amusing drollery and candor. (FIC WHITEHOU)

The Slap / by Christos Tsiolkas

An Australian author of Greek extraction, Christos Tsiolkas is a lifelong resident of Melbourne. He was the editor of his student newspaper in both high school and college and penned his first novel, Loaded, in 1995 at the

 age of 30. The novel was later made into the film Head On, a piece which won several AFI (Australian Film Institute) awards and gained international notoriety for both its controversial subject matter and riveting performances. In addition to his six full-length novels, Tsiolkas has written a number of plays and screenplays, many of which, like his fiction, have held worldwide acclaim. The Slap, his latest novel published in 2008, examines the conflict-driven sequence of events following a publicly controversial incident at a neighborhood barbecue.

"He bloody broke it. He should be punished."

At a family get together, an obnoxious three-year-old named Hugo acts aggressively toward another child without intervention. When the father of the victimized child sees nothing being done by the parents of the perpetrator, he slaps the kid across the face. Everyone is so horrified by the incident that, after a brief pause, the families disperse. A day later, the parents of the slapped child have the slapper arrested. The event is conflicted and complicated enough but their are deeper issues among the adult party-goers themselves. Hosts Hector and Aisha, a childless interracial couple, have their own private secrets just as they feel conflicted, caught in the middle as they are, about the incident. The slapper is Hector's hot-headed cousin, Harry, their original family having immigrated from Greece a generation previous. Harry defends his actions, feeling he was justified to discipline another couple's unruly offspring, and is defensive about the whole thing along along with Hector's mother and father who also witnessed the event. Hugo's parents are Rosie and Gary, a hippie-ish Anglo-saxon couple who say they never intervened because they believe in a more "naturalistic" resolution to matters of this sort, preferring to stand back and let any repercussions develop without a third party. Both Rosie and Gary--but especially Rosie--are simply outraged at Harry's act and are planning to press charges in full despite the uproar from the other side. As the trial approaches, furious Rosie and defensive Harry put more and more pressure on Aisha and Hector to testify on their behalf.

This book isn't really about child abuse or proper modes of discipline or anything like that. The slapping incident is really just a way to examine the dynamics of family and friendship connections, originally at the barbecue to look at how people of different backgrounds come together and then into a more privatized world of individual families and relationships. It's not an easy book to summarize. Tsiolkas uses his premise, a not uncommon everyday incident, to stabilize his larger structure. But his real talent is for exploring the inner lives of his eight primary characters, four women and four men, ranging in age from 18 to 70, all from different perspectives, family situations and ethnic origins. There are no stock characters in Tsiolkas' story. Each individual is a sharp observer with a particular personality, a personalized opinion. As things happen in the lives of the characters that have nothing to do with the case and are far more interesting, the audience is introduced to the truly idiosyncratic stations of all involved. No one is necessarily evil, no one deserves to be hit, or even judged negatively though all are distinctly flawed. Everyone means well, and everyone is doing the best he or she can; but then again, everyone is awfully angry. (FIC TSIOLKAS)

Long Day's Journey Into Night: A Play / by Eugene O'Neill

Of all the brooding playwrights hailing from the Modern/Post-Modern era, Eugene O'Neill might be the most tragic and morose. Like Ibsen, Pinter, Beckett and even Albee, O'Neill paints the portrait life as bleak as any, his characters full to the brim with disillusionment and despair usually enacting scenarios in which escalating cycles of conflict crush the soul. The son of an Irish immigrant actor, O'Neill was born on Broadway and raised in the shadow of the stage until his father eventually gave up the life and moved the family to Connecticut. On the surface, it wouldn't appear that his early years were all that bad. He was educated at Catholic boarding schools, spent his summers at the family's cottage home and attended Princeton before dropping out and joining the Navy. After contracting tuberculosis, he spent several years in recovery at a sanitorium whereupon he officially began writing and publishing his plays and poetry. A regular among the growing Socialist scene in Greenwich Village and other parts of the Northeast, O'Neill was well-known by a number of early American Communists, notably John Reed and Louise Bryant--the film Reds (DVD REDS) even speculates on a love triangle between the three. Even for an Irishman, O'Neill's life was particularly steeped in alcoholism and depression, themes overwhelmingly depicted in his plays like "The Iceman Cometh", about a New York City bar full of hopeless drunks too afraid to go outside, and even "A Moon for the Misbegotten", one of his lighter works focusing on the life of his older brother Jamie who died at the age of 45. "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is without a doubt his most autobiographical play, also perhaps his best one, evoking his family's thoroughly dysfunctional status just prior to O'Neill's entry into the sanitorium.

"If you can't be good you can at least be careful."

It seems a peaceful enough New England summer morning at the family cottage home of the Tyrones. Father James Sr. and mother Mary speak comfortingly to one another despite each's lingering preoccupations with the family's problems which include younger son Edmund's suspected tuberculosis and elder son Jamie's static life as a failed actor. A retired actor himself of moderately successful status whose long-running role in a single play provided financial stability but limited career opportunites, James has complicated his family's finances through faulty property acquisitions and poor decision making. Another far more hidden but much more devastating problem has been Mary's longtime drug addiction. Having just returned from another stint in rehab, she's strongly suspected by all three male Tyrones to have resumed her habit. Ironically James, Jamie and Edmund are each themselves alcoholics and their sly but honest attempts to find out info from Mary are received with cool retorts about their drinking. As the day wears on into evening, all four Tyrones escape the house for a while, the three males to get drunker and Mary to score a hit. When they return home near midnight all four are well-lathered up and ready for a fight.

O'Neill is regarded by more than a few of the well-informed as the best American playwright. While was never as popular as say Shaw or Noel Coward (both Brit contemporaries), perhaps not as structured as Miller, more subdued than Albee (a fellow Irish ex-pat) and certainly not as vociferous and loud as Tennessee Williams, he was one of the most keen observers of the human condition in all of literature. O'Neill's is perhaps not so much a style of representation as it is a personal tragedy from which he writes, a foregone conclusion of bereftness and desolation. But his hopelessness is far keener than any playwright before or since. Like with Pinter or Albee, there's an ominous repression of feelings and an inability to communicate emotions but nothing can remove the chronic, mutually bourne burden of doom from O'Neill's characters, something perhaps most well-manifested in "Long Day's Journey Into Night". The chief emotion among the Tyrone clan is a well-measured balance of rage and regret, thus making the sentiment most prominently evoked one of irrepressible misery. But their misery isn't something they're encountering for the first time, nor the second or even the last time. You get the sense that they're 'long day's journey into night' is exactly that--something they rise to reluctantly greet each day and violently retreat from with the onset of nightfall. There's a light at the end of the tunnel of their darkness but it's a familiar and unkind illumination, one they'd rather remain in the dark about than face. To face it means to confront a reality of fruitless immobility and recurrent misfortune. O'Neill never saw this particular play performed, never wanted to. Upon its completion in 1942, he sealed the manuscript in a vault with orders for it not to be viewed until after his death whereupon it debuted to obvious success. (812.52 ONEILL)

Freedom: A Novel / by Jonathan Franzen

St. Louis native Jonathan Franzen attended Swarthmore College and was a Fulbright Scholar priveleged enough to study in Germany. He's stuck close to his midwestern roots as an author though, setting many of his stories and characters places like Minnesota or Wisconsin and highlighting many of the themes inherent of the region. In addition to writing novels, he’s been a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and Harper’s where his talent as an essayist is well-known. His 2001 novel The Corrections won the National Book Award and became an Oprah’s Book Club selection despite Franzen’s personal opposition to the choice; he felt the ‘Oprah’s’ tag might designate the book for a predominately female audience whereas he'd personally hoped to reach more male readers. Freedom, his first novel since The Corrections, observes a family of progressive-minded Midwesterners through the latter decades of the twentieth century up until the most recent presidential election.
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The Berglunds of St. Paul, MN like to see themselves as making a difference. The liberal-minded couple, Walter and Patty, and their two children Jessica and Joey, are one of the first families to move back into the city from the suburbs, intent on renovating their “project” of a house and spearheading other urban renewal initiatives. From the neighbors’ perspective, the Berglunds are alright. Patty is the energetic mom, Walter is the level-headed lawyer promoting environmentalist causes, Jessica likes school and Joey, well, Joey likes his independence. From early on, Joey demonstrates his desire to do things his own way and with time develops severe rebellious streak, one which ironically fits well with his intense relationship with Connie Monaghan. Connie, the single-parent girl from down the street, starts a romance with Joey which sparks a rift between Joey and his parents. Tension escalates to an alarming level within the Berglund household and with their neighbors, so much so that Walter and Patty decide to relocate to Washington, D.C., a move forging a bitter physical and emotional rift with their son Joey.
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This period allows Patty to take into account her life up until now. Transcribing her autobiography at the request of her therapist, Patty pens down the events leading to the current situation and how the child she once was grew and changed into the woman she is now. In her youth Patty had been quite the athlete, a basketball star in high school seemingly destined for greatness. Breaking the mold of her more un-athletic, artistic minded family who want her to follow a more mapped-out Ivy League path, Patty attended the local state school on scholarship where she first met the hunky and ecologically consicious Richard Katz. A soulful musician with a passionate desire to help the environment, Richard became the object of Patty’s affection, increasingly more so when a knee injury ended her basketball career. The feeling wasn’t quite mutual though and a devastated Patty turned to Richard’s nerdy but available roommate Walter who ultimately became her husband. Walter, the man she thinks she still loves, has been a good provider and a loving father. But it all changes when Richard Katz reenters their lives and the drama of the Berglunds takes on a wholly different twist.
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Reminiscent of Updike with his thoroughly realist take on the American family and yet innovative in his approach to life in the contemporary sphere, Franzen has an adroitness about his writing which distinguishes him from other, similar writers. At times funny, lighthearted and satirical while at others dour, cynical and even morbid, Freedom introduces an archetype which is unlike any other in fiction. Here we have family in the modern generation with characters who've never really lacked for anything but aren't overly spoiled or inordinately warped, just unsure of themselves and their limitations. The Corrections was like this: a similar snapshot of nuclear family dynamics in the modern era where an overabundance of choices tends to cause problems. Characters have imbedded in them seemingly unbreakable convictions and yet aren't invulnerable to rash decisions and drastic changes of heart (Patty's marrying Walter, the Berglunds moving on a whim from the house they'd worked so hard on, Joey's switches in loyalty, etc.). It befits the title with its distinction of 'freedom', meant to connote the freedom felt within individual identity rather than the non-committal free-to-do-whatever mentality. (FIC FRANZEN)

Scattershot: My Bipolar Family / a memoir by David Lovelace

"What I knew of the world mutated continually, all a huge metaphor now--broken and heavy and rolling straight toward me." (p. 179)

What if both your parents were certifiable manic-depressives? For David Lovelace, who grew up as the middle of three children born to an artist mother and Presbyterian minister father, this was just the case. It was his mother, Betty Lee, in whom the disease first found a victim. Only then in 1949, as she was first succombing to severe depression and suspended manic episodes, it was delusional schizophrenia which the doctors believed her symptoms most reflected. She would remain in and out of institutions over the next forty years, always on and off medications, unendingly and tragically devastated by the disorder's symptoms. His father's own inclinations of illness began as his erratic behavior over the course of David's young life began spiraling out of control. Continued eccentricities and peculiar (though often funny) habits became increasingly visible to a confused and disturbed David all the way up until David's own diagnosis in 1986, a year when he, his father and younger brother were all likewised committed. Only David's sister, Peggy, was left alone by the disease, her sanity a godsend for the whole family throughout the years.

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Much like Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind (B JAMISON) or even Jeannette Walls' more recent work The Glass Castle (362.82092 WALLS), Lovelace meshes the problems of mental illness and dysfunctional family life with endearing, picquant candor, illuminating the world of loved ones affected by mental illness as much as those stricken with the affliction. Despite spending years fleeing his childhood home and his family's seemingly doomed existence, the author reveals that he's come to accept things as they are, optimistic about how life can win out over disease and illness. Lovingly, he reveals each of his family members as an especially unique individual, stating that the clan's mutual creativity and distinct personalities are as much a result of the "family condition" as a product of it. (616.895 LOVELACE)

Ordinary People / by Judith Guest

Judith Guest grew up as an aspiring writer throughout high school and college, majoring in English and Psychology at the University of Michigan. Her first and still best-regarded book Ordinary People originally began as a short story, eventually growing longer as Guest continued to explore the characters in greater depth. After winning the Kafka Prize for best first novel in 1976, the book was adapted for the big screen by director Robert Redford (his directorial debut) and would go on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Redford and then teenager Timothy Hutton would also win Oscars for Best Director and Best Actor respectively.

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."They are people of good taste. They do not discuss a problem in the presence of the problem. And, besides, there is no problem. There is just Phase Two. Recovery. A moving forward." (p. 4)
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Conrad Jarrett is 17 and a student at Lake Forest (IL) High where in addition to academics, he participates on the swim team and sings in the choir. He's a seemingly well-adjusted youth, having been brought up in a priveleged home with two loving parents, an established group of friends, college on the horizon and even a few flirtatious love interests. But Conrad is anything but alright. The same goes for his parents, Calvin and Beth Jarrett, who not only have no idea how to deal with Conrad, but are visibly becoming unhinged themselves in the wake of two recent family tragedies--the accidental death of the Jarrett's older son "Buck" and Conrad's own attempted suicide just under a year ago.
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Things are in a bad way for the Jarrett household which is shaky at best, the trio weighed down by emotional tension, more or less isolated from each other since Conrad's return from the hospital some months ago and at a loss to forge any continuity or mutual intimacy. Mom Beth scampers about, busybodying herself with a myriad of social functions, trying to suppress her still cavernous grief over Buck's death, all the while behaving in a passively-aggressive, even dismissive manner towards Conrad, the less-favored son. And while Calvin is openly warm and affectionate toward all, his own naieve efforts to change things usually end in failure. Though his one notion, getting Conrad to see a psychiatrist, does finally garner some feedback and, if not family togetherness, then at least some insight into what's actually going on.
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Several things set Ordinary People at a level above the montage of suburban soap operas, semifactual docudramas or depressing after school specials. There's the integrity of the story, its matter-of-fact but not stereotyped people and situations, and its development of the characters. Circumstances don't change a whole lot between the time the novel begins sometime in autumn and when it concludes around late winter: Conrad's still depressed, Beth's still decimated with grief and Calvin's still rankled at the inertness of his life. The affluence of the Jarrett's surroundings is clearly apparent but never promoted as a reason for each character's turmoil. Pain, problems and grief originate within each individual and flow outwards; and though all three protagonists are provided with the opportunity to examine themselves, pinpoint the source of distress and push forward towards a resolution, not all are up to the task. (FIC GUEST)

The Nanny Diaries: A Novel / by Emma McLaughlin

Nan is a recent college graduate turned part-time graduate student at NYU in need of a steady job to pay tuition along with the rent on her tiny but expensive Manhattan studio apartment. Thinking that a gig as a nanny could be right up her alley--she is majoring in early childhood development--Nan replies to a quirky newspaper ad requesting a young woman to be an au paire for a four-year-old child in a ritzy part of uptown, little knowing what she's getting herself into. The family, referred to as the X's--Mr. & Mrs. X and son Grayer X--epitomize wealthy upper-class Manhattan society and, wholly without warning, Nan is thrust into the world of insane duties and demands disproportionately irrelevant to her position. Soon she learns just how domineering, overbearing and downright despotic the parents of a priveleged Park Avenue toddler can be.

In addition to attending to Grayer's basic toddler needs--supervising his hygiene, ensuring he's attired properly and that absolutely NO sugar is in any of the food he eats--Nan must escort him to all manner of activities which fill up his day, many of which are expressly intended to help Grayer gain entry to one of the city's more prestigious preschool/pre-K institutions. Grayer is not allowed to watch TV, play video games or partake in any other form of popular entertainment and may only interact with potential friends on a pre-approved "play date". Any deviation from these rules--intentional, unintentional or otherwise--and Nan catches hell from Mrs. X, whose daily routine of aerobics, spa treatments and window shopping will have now been thoroughly ruined if one of the petty directives circumscribed on her little lists aren't adhered to. Needless to say, Nan is unavoidably torn between resentment and loathing for Mrs. X and sympathy toward the innocent and still uncorrupted Grayer, whose life, it seems can only become worse after Nan finds out that the ever-absent Mr. X is currently cheating on Mrs. X with another woman.

What begins like another lighthearted chick-lit caper, humorously following its heroine through the perils of New York City, quickly moves into more serious territory, becoming an earnest, solemn and even sinister diatribe on domestic roles and boundaries as the story progresses. While the X's are blatantly lampooned as being among the most thoroughly over-indulged, self-absorbed figures in society, there's the sense that it's not all in plain good fun. Almost immediately Nan begins to interpret the fragile ties binding the three members of the family together, threatening to break apart at any moment: Mr. X is a workaholic with absolutely no time (nor the willingness to make the time) for his son; Mrs. X makes a permanent livelihood of masking her imperfections and extreme vulnerability through the sterilizing of her surroundings; and Grayer is really a child without a childhood, cruelly deprived of not only any joy in life, but of the stability to make it happen. Nanny Diaries is by no means a perfect book; but it offers an entertaining read which is well worth it on multiple levels. (FIC MCLAUGHLIN)

The Lovely Bones / by Alice Sebold

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One of the more interesting publishing stories of the decade was in 2002-2003 when The Lovely Bones by first-time novelist Alice Sebold staked a claim to the top spot. The book, in which a young girl's abduction and murder is retold by the victim (in spirit form), grabbed its fair share of attention and headlines from the more pedigreed works by Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code), James Patterson and Danielle Steel. Seven years later, the movie version starring Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz is set to debut, opening next month. Sebold is a former student of the University of Houston's M.F.A. program.
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"The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life." p. 363
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Susie Salmon is 14 on December 6, 1973, the last day of her life. The oldest daughter of Jack and Abigail Salmon of Norristown, Pennsylvania, Susie meets her fate walking home alone from school after a confrontation with her peculiar neighbor George Harvey sees her raped, murdered and concealed, her corpse dismembered and boxed up. It's a while before the Salmons--both Jack and Abigail along with Lindsey, Susie's younger sister by a year, and Buckley, the toddler son--accept that Susie is really dead, not just missing. Questions linger until an elbow (Susie's), a remnant of the dead girl mistakenly left behind, is found giving finality to the case. The years following death of their beloved daughter and sister hold some ill after-effects, the family steadily becoming unhinged under the weight of their distress. Abigail's withdrawal of affection from her children and husband, her foray into adultery and ultimate flight from the home, Lindsey's alienation, Buckley's resentment, Jack's assurance of Harvey's guilt and self-destructive fixation over the inability to see him brought to justice all push things toward a near-irreparable disarray.

But Susie's mortal death hasn't totally suspended her from contact with her family. Susie, now an amorphous spirit in her own personal heaven, observes their world perceiving their collective grief, sensing each's pain, misery and despair. The spirit Susie actively "accommodate" each of her family members, witnessing her mother's betrayal and abandonment of the family unit, observing her sister Lindsey's bitterness finding some solace with a loyal boyfriend, relating to her brother's sense of being forgotten and, perhaps most poignantly, understanding her father's grief and how it's medicated through his unending obsession for revenge and justice. Susie is even able to "see" George Harvey, the boy he once was, the torturous childhood he endured, his pathological need to kill, his previous and subsequent victims (Susie was neither his first nor his only girl) and the utter remorseless indifference towards his crimes.

The Lovely Bones' popularity is well-merited. There's a sort of absorbing voyeurism to the characters, their lives evocatively illuminated through Sebold's superior prose, engaging hold on the reader and clever arrangement of the narrative. Susie's presence and cognition in relation to each of her family's lives--their innermost thoughts, their reactions and convictions, frustrations and revelations is profoundly entrancing, the attraction of the novel and pursuit through the chapters not so much about seeking a resolution as to be immersed in the almost ethereal atmosphere of the story.

Secrets & Lies (1996) DVD w/ Brenda Blethlyn, Timothy Spall & Marianne Jean-Baptiste; a film by Mike Leigh

"This is the life, innit, sweethearts?"

 

Widow Cynthia Purley is a woman doomed by fear and insecurity. Over the hill and over-involved in the lives of her now grown son and daughter, she's become a product of isolation and despair, unwilling to confront being left alone. Loving and considerate her children may be, her son Maurice and live-in daughter Roxanne are frustrated by their weepy mother's pandering intrusiveness, equally desirous to have their hands untied. Both have their own lives now, Maurice with his wife Monica, a new home and photography business and Roxanne, who despite living with Cynthia, is increasingly occupied with her job and new boyfriend. Meanwhile, not too far across town, Hortense Cumberbatch has just lost her adoptive mother to cancer. Resolving to seek out her birth mother after 30 years, Hortense goes through the process of locating her real family in between shifts at her optometrist practice only to find the results too far-fetched to believe. The records show Hortense, who's black, to have a mother who's white. When double-checks and second opinions confirm this as the actual truth, Hortense bravely decides to seek out her real mom for the first time.

Known as your favorite director's favorite director, Mike Leigh has long been one of the world's most influential filmmakers, his deeply intimate films revealing an unprecedented vision of dramatic realism. While at the center of this moving film are of two women--one bold, the other frail--mutually encountering a daunting truth, it's the peripheral characters, specifically Roxanne and Maurice, who complete the drama. Maurice played by Timothy Spall may be the only thing standing between Cynthia and the deep end, his shaky stability practically the fulcrum by which the family stays afloat. And yet his own life is weighed down by convictions of personal inadequacy and self-doubt, perpetually confronted with a wife unable to give birth and a need to sustain his teetering photo business. Seemingly held back by her circumstances, Roxanne might have the incentive but lacks the direction and most of all the means to get out from under. The story's ultimately defined by its two leads though, the culminating meeting and revelation between Cynthia and Hortense portrayed as an intensely awkward but wholly believable circumstance. (DVD SECRETS)

The Glass Castle / by Jeanette Walls

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Discontented with your, relatively speaking, compatible living conditions in Arizona, your parents decide to uproot you and your three siblings and promptly settle in West Virginia. That kind of gumption might fly with the Robinsons, but in real life, as they say, 'it rolls downhill'; even living at the top of a hill as you do in the lean-to, shanty-of-shack you now call home. Having permanently entrenched in coal country, your parents essentially relieve themselves of responsibility, conspicuously devoting their lives to sloth and indigence while you bare the brunt of their unfortunate choices.

This particular 'Your' life was, in fact, the hard-scrabble yet comically-driven youth endured by current MSNBC journalist Jeanette Walls. What begins as a considerably upbeat family-on-the-move adventure evolves into a rather tragic narrative of poverty and privation before Jeanette, at 17, takes matters into her own hands, leaving her family for New York City. Her father 'Rex', a foremost nonconformist and wannabe inventor-entrepeneur, may as well bare the blame for the whole mess. While it's his charisma which drives things forward, he constantly fumbles away family priorities, ultimately succumbing to despair, dissipation and neglect by the book's second half. Even then, he manages to consume a multitude of Jeanette's compassion, empathy and dignity; not to mention large quantities of her money prior to his premature, alcohol-induced death at 55.

With traumatic childhoods all the rage, one more over-indulgent memoir can't hurt things too much. For all the problems Walls and her (now moderately successful) siblings faced growing up, she still loves her parents as if they were the enlightened visionaries they aimed at being rather than the deadbeat losers they exemplified((-y); her mother still claws through garbage around NYC)). It entertains though; which is enough to establish it as the perfect book club book for mainstream readers.