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Fiction Ruined My Family

3.31 of 5 stars 3.31 · rating details · 623 ratings · 161 reviews

The youngest of four daughters in an old, celebrated St. Louis family of prominent journalists and politicians on one side, debutante balls and equestrian trophies on the other, Jeanne Darst grew up hearing stories of past grandeur. And as a young girl, the message she internalized was clear: while things might be a bit tight for us right now, it's only temporary. Soon her...more

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published September 29th 2011 by Riverhead Hardcover (first published January 1st 2011)

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May 11, 2012 Dani Peloquin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Let me just say it, I hate memoirs. I really truly do. I have read enough stories about how someone painted themselves green for a year and journaled about it, I have worked my way through stories about abusive families and drunken childhoods, I have found no interest in true tales of cooking one’s way through divorce. Overall, I am not the memoir type. It is for this reason that I have NO idea why I requested to read this book. When it arrived on my doorstep I took one look at it and thought “d...more Let me just say it, I hate memoirs. I really truly do. I have read enough stories about how someone painted themselves green for a year and journaled about it, I have worked my way through stories about abusive families and drunken childhoods, I have found no interest in true tales of cooking one’s way through divorce. Overall, I am not the memoir type. It is for this reason that I have NO idea why I requested to read this book. When it arrived on my doorstep I took one look at it and thought “damn. another whiny memoir about a sucky childhood”. But let me say this: I WAS SO WRONG! Sure Jeanne Darst had an alcoholic mother, a distant father, and distraught siblings but her spin on her personal history is perfection. There is no whining, no complaining, and some actual levity. I haven’t laughed this much since “Are You There Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea” (and we all know how much I loved that book). My only complaint is that no one told me this was funny, so I was the most shocked when I started hysterically laughing on the subway. All I could do was lift up the book to my fellow passengers as a gesture of apology and endorsement.

Jeanne Darst is moved from her loving household with her parents, siblings, and grandmother in St. Louis, Missouri to the bustling city of New York. Everyone is unsure if this midwest family can make the transition to the city that never sleeps. Fotunately, or unfortunately, they fit right in. Darst’s father is a starving novelist who has never actually written a published book but has great ambitions and knows that his break is just around the corner. Darst’s mother is an alcoholic raised with an in-house horse trainer only to be shackled to four kids and a dreamer husband in her adulthood. To say that she is resentful is a grave understatement. Jeanne chronicles her father’s revolving door of jobs, her mother’s attempt at the workforce and the inevitable disintegration of their familial relationships. While the goal of most parents is to inspire their children to follow their dreams, Jeanne’s family history pushes her away from her ambitions of being a writer. In order to find herself, she must first follow in the footsteps of her parents and recover from their wrongdoings.

I know this sounds heavy...and it is. BUT it is also hilarious! Darst has a fantastic wit, an excellent handle on sarcasm, and an eye for the ridiculous. She clearly loves her family but she sees its flaws and isn’t afraid to reveal them to the world. Additionally, she is open about herself and her character flaws. In this way, she reminds me a great deal of Chelsea Handler who is able to poke fun at the one she loves but also at herself. However, unlike Handler, Darst is introspective and understands the reasoning behind her actions. I want to give this five stars, but I felt that it did lag towards the end and regress into some navel-gazing. Still, I think just about everyone would benefit from reading this book!

www.iamliteraryaddicted.blogspot.com (less)

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Oct 03, 2012 Sara Furr rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book. I'd read a few glowing reviews. I made it through the first 58 pages even though they were a bit tedious with a fair amount of crude language and references thrown in for no apparent purpose. But then I read the first sentence on p. 59, "Mom's Summa Cum Laude routine got a little old after a few hundred mentions, and she'd never really had a job." This is a writer referring to the mother who appears to be the sole person responsible for paying the few bills whi...more

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Oct 22, 2011 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 20, 2013 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

They should really have half stars here. The first half of this book is four star and hysterical (honest, observant, cynical, sarcastic, etc). Some of the best memoir I've read.

But then Darst turns out to be a dud in the second half. She'll ramble about how horrible her parents are, saying some really awful stuff about them, but she can't admit to any fault. She rationalizes her decision not to visit her mother or father when they're in the same city and desperately in need of support (physicall...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Eris rated it 4 of 5 stars

After blowing through this book quickly, I am surprised to see so many low ratings - different drums I suppose.

This book does have the train wreck combination of dysfunctional family memoir, addiction memoir, and "finding myself" memoir all wrapped into one - but by the end you find a person who really does seem to figure out who they are and make peace with it all. There is very little pretty or uplifting, this isn't the great conquering all odds memoir that some folks may have wanted to see......more

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May 17, 2012 Megan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-but-unowned, non-fiction, biographies, arc-s

I hate to do this. I really do. Especially considering that by giving this book a rating, I feel as if I am rating the person, even though that is not what I am doing. I have to give this memoir a two star review.

What attracted me to the memoir at first was the description. Who wouldn't enjoy a deeply witty book about drinking, demons, family dysfunction and the all encompassing writing bug? However, once I started to read the book, I saw that this book wasn't deeply witty, it was deeply sad.

The...more I hate to do this. I really do. Especially considering that by giving this book a rating, I feel as if I am rating the person, even though that is not what I am doing. I have to give this memoir a two star review.

What attracted me to the memoir at first was the description. Who wouldn't enjoy a deeply witty book about drinking, demons, family dysfunction and the all encompassing writing bug? However, once I started to read the book, I saw that this book wasn't deeply witty, it was deeply sad.

The first third and last third of the book were actually quite good. I found myself really understanding Darst and her family life, if only for a moment. The middle, unfortunately, left a very sour taste in my mouth. The Jeanne Darst we see in this portion is not, in my opinion, a person you can easily like. Granted, the middle of the memoir is when she is in her deepest throes of alcoholism, but some of the things she writes leaves me cold. While at times you can tell that the commentary is meant to be from "past Jeanne", sometimes the horrible things she says seem to come from "modern Jeanne", and it would make me incredibly disgusted. I mean, it is one thing for "past Jeanne" to act the part of the self-centered alcoholic when her therapist begins to cry at a session because she has Lyme disease and the hospital is giving her the run around about a procedure. It is completely another when a grown, sober woman infers that because of this that the therapist was broken and shouldn't be doing her job. It was heartless.

Darst also didn't seem to have a filter for things that might have been better left unsaid. I know that she probably wanted to capture the full "truth" of certain instances and really convey how messed up her family was, but for God sakes, did she have to take all the dignity away from her father when she talked about seeing his genitals as he is writhing in a hospital bed?

I will say that I think that Jeanne Darst is a very capable writer. In fact, there was one pun she made that stuck with me and will probably continue to stand out in the future. When she said that one of her college co-workers had a "latemotif" running throughout her life, I chuckled. As a writer and a musician, I really appreciated what she did with that phrase. It was quite clever! Darst has a great feel for language and THAT was what kept me reading. I wanted to see how she would phrase and describe things!

My biggest issue is that Darst was mostly unlikeable in the heart of the memoir, which I am sure was due to being the self-centered alcoholic. However, when some of her lack of remorse for appalling situations seems to be coming from the modern Darst, it left me wondering if the jerky behavior was due to the alcohol or if it was just her. The reason I don't know if I buy that is because she does have so much clarity, understanding and kindness in the latter part of the book that I want to just chalk it up to poor editing or word choice. Perhaps it is something she may want to revisit in the future if that is not the way she wanted to be portrayed in her own writing.

The writing and the book are actually quite good, and if you are into authors like David Sedaris, then this might be right up your alley (I'm not a Sedaris fan, so that could be why this type of humor doesn't resonate with me). For me, it just wasn't the deeply witty book it was touted to be. I was more saddened and horrified by her life than laughing. I am glad that she is in a much better place with her life and wish her the best because after all she has been through, she DOES deserve to find that happiness and for those pieces to fall into place! What she struggled through and overcame is immeasurable, and for that I have to give her all the credit in the world. I think she is stronger than she thinks and more than she could ever imagine. You see glimmers of that person, and THAT is the Jeanne Darst that I find to be lovable and amazing. That is the Darst that I enjoyed reading about. It's just unfortunate that that side of her is the one least seen in her memoir.(less)

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Mar 18, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: debutantes who live on the wrong side of the tracks

Shelves: 2012

Jeanne Darst and this book were first introduced to me when I heard the excerpt on This American Life. It was funny, genteel and urbane all at once. Similar to how the book feels. Jeanne Darst, one of four daughters, is born part into an old St. Louis family filled with past grandeur, manners, equestrian awards and a lot of monogramming. She is quickly uprooted, so Dad can write his great American novel, in the late 1970s to Amagansett, Stony Hill Farm. Which was noted as the spot Arthur Miller...more

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Mar 05, 2012 Raquel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, march

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. There were some good lines and occasional entertaining anecdotes, but overall: Meh.

Her family is wacky and at first I was digging it. Then Jeanne just became awful and I stopped giving a shit about her. I also didn't think her awfulness was entirely the fault of her wacky upbringing. Plenty of people have had wacky, dysfunctional families and have been just fine--in fact, very much unawful.

She fixated on stories that were truly unimportant to the plot--I like scatalogical anecdotes as much as t...more There were some good lines and occasional entertaining anecdotes, but overall: Meh.

Her family is wacky and at first I was digging it. Then Jeanne just became awful and I stopped giving a shit about her. I also didn't think her awfulness was entirely the fault of her wacky upbringing. Plenty of people have had wacky, dysfunctional families and have been just fine--in fact, very much unawful.

She fixated on stories that were truly unimportant to the plot--I like scatalogical anecdotes as much as the next gal, but I really did NOT need a chapter-long tale about dealing with pubic lice, and not just for the gross-out factor, but moreso because it really had nothing to do with anything--and then spends just a few pages at the end of said crab louse chapter saying, by the way, my mom was unconscious and bleeding on the floor, thank god I found her in time or she would have died. Ditto the shitting in a bag story. Yes, she shits in a bag. And goes on about it for pages.

She does not dive deep into overcoming her alcoholism. Isn't it a horrendous, painful process to slog out and recover from an addiction? Jeanne glosses over it. "I stopped drinking and thought I was sort of lame. I wish my mom had stopped too." That's what it distills down to.

She keeps talking about wanting to write, but doesn't delve into that very deeply either. Instead she talks about her failure to hold a steady job ad nauseum by describing her outlandish behavior at the jobs she does have (for precious little time). Why don't you talk about writing?

Then she skates over the fact that she gets pregnant by a boyfriend she hasn't had very long, marries him, whines about living in LA while penning her memoir, and seems pissed to no end that her father is obsessed with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Apparently an editor or early reader said, "Tie in the Fitzgeralds' fucked up marriage to your own parents' relationship" and she did her best. Then she decides her own marriage sucks and is over. She barely talks about what it is like to be a mother. I've heard that having a kid is kind of a big deal.

Then she ends the book by talking about how working from home means you have the luxury of cooking your own lunch, which is a joy most people will never know, as they are stuck working in offices. I agree with that part: having lunch at home is awesome. But I don't ever want to read anything else she wrote, including the one-woman play she talks about repeatedly in the book that sounded absurd. There was no redeeming quality to this book--rather it felt like a bunch of anecdotes loosely strung together. I didn't learn anything, I wasn't even clear on how the author grew and changed, I was frustrated that the narrative was so choppy.

The title is fabulous. The rest has its moments few and far between but doesn't hold up.

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Jan 21, 2012 Peggy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I saw a reference to this book somewhere and loved the title. I wish I had heard some of it as it was presented on This American Life because I have a feeling this is a work that would be better appreciated in the author's own voice. That seems particularly true in the works of people who do stand-up; their delivery helps carry material that doesn't seem as rich on paper. That said there is some very funny and at the same time appalling tales from Jeanne Darst's childhood and early adulthood. Sh...more

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Nov 13, 2011 Ciara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobio-memoir, read-in-2011

once again, i wish goodreads gave us the option of half-stars. because i think this is on the cusp between three & four stars. it is extremely flawed, but also very entertaining. though i am of course biased because i enjoy memoirs.

darst's memoir is admittedly pretty thin on material. she is the youngest daughter of a pair of st. louis alcoholics. her mother was a wealthy child equestrian who seemed to think the gravy train would never stop, even if she married a bumbling, alcoholic, peripat...more once again, i wish goodreads gave us the option of half-stars. because i think this is on the cusp between three & four stars. it is extremely flawed, but also very entertaining. though i am of course biased because i enjoy memoirs.

darst's memoir is admittedly pretty thin on material. she is the youngest daughter of a pair of st. louis alcoholics. her mother was a wealthy child equestrian who seemed to think the gravy train would never stop, even if she married a bumbling, alcoholic, peripatetic writer. when he could not keep her in the manner to which she had become accustomed, she turned to whiskey. he was descended from a long line of notable journalists & assumed that he would follow in their footsteps to write the great american novel. while he managed to sell a lot of stories to some very respectable markets, he never managed to publish a novel, & he spent his golden years laboriously obsessing over a biography of f. scott fitzgerald, which darst uses as a rather ham-fisted & funereal metaphor for her parents' relationship.

darst herself grows up to be an alcoholic who can't hold down a job or a relationship, even while she imagines that she will somehow break through the hangover fog long enough to write an amazing play that will catapult her to financial stability & literary success. most of the book is a long series of non-sequitors that would be more at home in a book of humorous essays by david sedaris or sloane crosley (which is not to say that darst is as funny as those writers--though she probably could be, if she didn't feel the need to steep her writing in bathos to give it a literary patina). i felt like i was reading a series of stories that darst busts out at parties, rather than a memoir that was actually going somewhere. & a warning for anyone who doesn't enjoy bathroom humor: you'll probably just want to give this book a pass.

things especially fell apart toward the end of the book, when darst's mother dies. shortly thereafter, darst gets pregnant with a man she's been dating for a few months. they get married & move to los angeles, where darst, who obviously considers herself a new york sophisticate, is lonely & ill at ease. she begins working on this memoir, & her husband clearly does not approve, thinking that she is behaving as obsessively as her father, & is likely to go as far, which is to say, nowhere. the relationship falls apart & darst moves back to new york.

i got the impression that all of this was written more or less as it was happening & didn't benefit from the same level of reflection & revision as the rest of the book. i mean, when i was reading earlier parts of the book, i may have wondered why exactly darst felt the need to include thirty pages about this time she pooped into a bag because someone was in the bathroom, but at least the writing was engaging & well-paced (although darst needs to be arrested immediately for abuse & misuse of punctuation--it's as if she substituted half of her periods for commas, put this revised manuscript into a bag, & shook it up, so that her over-abundance of commas was scattered haphazardly throughout the text with no rhyme or reason). this last section was a tedious slog. it reminded me of watching the last film in the "lord of the rings" trilogy. just when you think it's over, there's another scene. (less)

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Nov 23, 2011 Meghan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, addiction

"My whole life had felt like a good story - something in which I participated in order to create something that could be used for conversation later." (p. 224) Black humor - bleak humor? - about a genteel family descending into poverty. Jeanne's father is a writer who can never quite finish a novel, as her mother gradually becomes an alcoholic fixated on her glory days as a debutante. Out of all of her siblings, Jeanne takes after both of her parents the most.

Darst writes a lot about the import...more

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Nov 10, 2012 Sally rated it 3 of 5 stars

I haven't read Running with Scissors or Glass Castle, which a lot of people compare this to unfavorably. I picked this up after dropping yet another attempt at fiction-writing, as a weird form of distraction/therapy. I think it raises some good questions about the cliche of "creative temperament", how it's almost an assumption that the better a writer you are, the more awful your real life must be. Fledgling writers have this idea that being destructive is some part of the creative process. Dars...more

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Mar 12, 2012 Jeanne rated it 2 of 5 stars

It seems kind of unfair to just give this book 2 stars when I actually did finish it, even though about halfway I didn't think I would. I like reading memoirs about quirky families, but this one had a loooong section of supposedly hilarious escapades while the author is in the midst of her alcoholism. Every once in a while she seems a little remorseful about things but mostly her tone reminds me of a bunch of teens saying, "Whoa. We really got trashed last weekend. It was so cool. You shoulda se...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Sarah N. rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: didn-t-finish

Ultimately annoying. Started off well but became really really tiresome. Has been compared to Running With Scissors and The Glass Castle. Pales in comparison to both.

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Oct 27, 2011 Noel Rooks rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: library

Darst's book is another in a long line of , "look at my crazy childhood/life/career choices" memoirs. Quite often I found her annoying, with her insistence that One Has to Suffer For Art. At 20, it's understandable. At 30, you're just avoiding growing up. In any case, I kept reading because Darst does make her crazy family interesting, the passages on her dad's Fitzgerald obsession in particular. I also liked her snarky POV, but sometimes the story was disjointed - she'd mention someone by first...more

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Dec 11, 2011 Jeannine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fic

I was hoping this was a book about a woman learning to create a writing life for herself, but in some ways, this is more about the shambling ruin of a once-great set of families, in the personas of her two parents - an alcoholic former debutante and a failed Fitzgerald fanatic. The telling of the parents' stories ends up being much more entertaining and interesting than the writer's own life, which the writer seems to just sort of wave at once in a while - oh, here's where I was an alcoholic, he...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, memoir

Funny, bittersweet memoir written by a woman who grew up with a failed writer father and a blueblood alcoholic mother. She really does a sendup of what it’s like to be the child of a writer and all the little “quirks” that entails. This, along with her parents’ privileged upbringings, makes it unlike other “we had it rough” memoirs.

The author herself is both these things, a failed (at first) writer and an alcoholic, and I loved the point she made about how she was almost competing with her paren...more

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Mar 20, 2012 Alison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

Like Jeanette Walls' parents in "Glass Castle," the Darsts worried more about what their children were reading than eating. The father spends his life writing a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald that will never be published (or finished). The mother, a former socialite, bemoans the life she should have had. ("The crying was like a Tony Kushner play--it started one night and ended three nights later.") The four daughters are left to fend for themselves. Jeanne, the youngest, is the family screw-up...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Carrol rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not a bad read, but I'm tempted to say if you've read one story of a dysfunctional family you've read them all. Maybe that's not fair. In this case, the author's dad was always writing the great American novel but never getting it finished, though he had been published in magazines such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, etc. Meanwhile, the mother was drinking herself into oblivion and trying to maintain the fiction that the family moved in the "better" echelons of society. The auth...more

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Dec 07, 2011 Cheryl Hart rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, humor

Fiction Ruined My Family, by Jeanne Darst

First of all, I love reading memoirs. Peeking into someone’s life--into their painful past, guarded secrets, and sorrowful mistakes usually leads to a good read.

With that said, I’m not really sure how I feel about Fiction Ruined My Family. With more than a peek into Jeanne’s past, her not-so-secret family lifestyle, and a long trail of dysfunction (I’m surprised fit into a single book) I still close the book wanting. Wanting what? I’m not sure. I’m a lit...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Diane Wilkes rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Funny, the Ribald, and the Poignant

Jeanne Darst has written a memoir for anyone who loves humor, insight, recovery, literature and/or writing. The fourth daughter of a writer-son from a journalistic family and a former horsy debutante, Darst is most assuredly not "an idiote." Her father has the talent to be a great writer and the dreams to achieve it--but after two unpublished novels, he wastes his brilliance on researching F. Scott Fitzgerald for the rest of his life. Mom moves from being a...more The Funny, the Ribald, and the Poignant

Jeanne Darst has written a memoir for anyone who loves humor, insight, recovery, literature and/or writing. The fourth daughter of a writer-son from a journalistic family and a former horsy debutante, Darst is most assuredly not "an idiote." Her father has the talent to be a great writer and the dreams to achieve it--but after two unpublished novels, he wastes his brilliance on researching F. Scott Fitzgerald for the rest of his life. Mom moves from being a depressive to a depressive alcoholic. Jeanne has to determine which family traditions to adopt and which to transcend.

Doesn't that sound gloomy? FICTION RUINED MY FAMILY is anything but. It is hysterically funny: "Your mother's not an alcoholic, she just thinks every night is New Year's Eve." And, "I have bad judgment, or no judgment. Like Lenny in OF MICE AND MEN, I pet things too hard and then hide the evidence." It is ribald--the book includes a lengthy segment on how Jeanne gets and shares a dose of crabs (it is quoted in other reviews, so I shall not reiterate).

And oh, it is poignant: "I can't help remembering this saying of hers, because not only did her life end not well, it didn't end badly. It ended horrifically, one of the worse endings I've ever seen to a life. And when this happens, when this happens to your mother, what do you remember? Which Mom? Which morning? Which nights? What do you leave and what do you take with you? Clearly I'm not here looking for day-count coins from AA. But is there something here that will work for me, that will help me find I don't f-ing know what? She no longer has to be or not be anything to anyone. She didn't get sober. She wasn't the mom I wanted her to be. I wanted her to fight. Fight. Fight. Fight. But she didn't, obviously. And it was over. So then why was I scanning the joint like it was my own brain: deducing the love, the anger, the confusion, looking for her, in death, to be something I could live with? We were here to clean out her apartment, to get rid of things. But it seemed I was actually here to acquire a mother."

This is a great memoir, reminding me in some ways of LIT by Mary Karr, yet radiating a completely unique voice. I look forward to reading more of Darst, or better yet, seeing her play, SALLY ON THE MOUNT: "She becomes a sex-worker in the meatpacking district but decides, amid all the art world craziness of the 80's in New York, that what she does is actually art, that her f-ing is so rich, so expressive, that she's a "f-ing artist." She adapts Orwell's ANIMAL FARM into a blow job and collaborates with a man who calls himself Ken Burn on a seventeen-part PBS series called THE AMERICAN ANUS." Etc.
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Aug 29, 2011 Megan rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

Jeanne Darst inherits writing and alcohol addictions from her parents. The back cover leads me to believe she overcomes these addictions, but as of page 150 when I stopped reading, she hadn't.

Rated R for strong, frequent and gratuitous language and sexually explicit material. I did not finish this book.

I won this through Goodreads Firstreads.

The writing was okay. Even good in some places:
*"She was just a genuinely passionate reader. She read while doing other things, multitasking back when it...more

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Mar 20, 2012 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

message 1: by Nancy (new) - rated it 4 stars 4 minutes ago
Glass Castles meets Chelsea Handler! This book was such a surprise - there were times I laughed out loud, there were times my heart went out to this confused, feisty young lady. She survived a chaotic childhood, slightly more affluent than Jeanette Wells, to emerge quite broken. At about the point I couldn't stand the raunchiness anymore, the tone changed and I realized this was a story about survival. Darst did a suburb job of describing...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Greta rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, addiction

I can't believe I read the who-o-o-o-le thing. I kept wanting to quit but there was just enough to keep me going since the father of the author was a complete romantic bibliophile, living his life as if it were an extension of his favorite fiction. I have a soft spot for people like that since my own father had a similar bent. The difference: my father was gainfully employed as an English professor and wasn't an alcoholic.

Through the author's eyes we witness the descent of both her parents, but...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Matt Weber rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fiction Ruined My Family is the best memoir I've read in years. I thoroughly enjoyed the quality of the writing and the stories. It is ridiculously witty, stark, and honest. So much so that some parts made me laugh until it hurt while other parts made me uncomfortable to have a glimpse into the author’s colorful and oftentimes riotous life. I can’t relate to the author’s family experiences, but the writing is so good that I could picture the stories perfectly. The author is able to move emotions...more

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Dec 30, 2011 Zac rated it 4 of 5 stars

Darst moves fluidly from the comic to the tragic and back again. Opposing pages regularly brought out opposing emotions.
She details life growing up with three sisters, a non-writing writer father and a alcoholic-depressive mother with wit and honesty. It's clear at several points Darst's humor is the well-developed defense mechanism one often finds in the children of alcoholics. Appropriate to the book, I found myself darkly grateful at that humor's refinement.
I read the book in one sitting and...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Lisa Barrett rated it 3 of 5 stars

I feel like I've read a lot of these lately - auto biographies by young women who came from a messed up family background, were messed up a while themselves, their parents died in tragic or depressing ways, the author finally got her stuff together and now she is living a decent life. I had high hopes for this one but ended up just feeling okay when it was done. I never felt a passion from the writer, more a passive observation of her life, almost as if she was too afraid to really face where sh...more

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Dec 17, 2011 Christine Frank rated it 4 of 5 stars

One-third of the way through . . . loving it so far. But then I am a St. Louisian who grew up down the road from the Darsts and am maybe a little older than the author. The St. Louis place names are really resonating with my homesickness, as are the journalistic/literary rifts. So far, I want the best for this family but I am not so sure about that.

****** Rest TK

In hated to see this one end. This begs for a sequel or a "where are they now" update at the very least. I loved the author and her st...more

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Oct 17, 2011 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

There are too many memoirs in this world, most of them weepy and maudlin. This one is hilarious and profane and extremely booze-soaked. Even if Darst hadn't had come from a writing bloodline she would have had to become a writer to mine her insane family story. Yes, alcoholism is a serious disease, but it's also great fodder for storytelling. You laugh at and with Darst while you cringe. And I really loved her hapless father. What dad opens a conversation with a teen daughter's new friend, "Now,...more

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Aug 05, 2011 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

I won this book through the FirstReads program on goodreads.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found myself drawn from one emotion to the next as I read about Jeanne Darst's life from childhood to adulthood. For reader's who enjoyed reading Wall's "Glass Castle" or either of the Wolff brothers' memoirs of their childhood with alcoholic. depressive and dysfunctional family-life, this book resonates in much the same way. There are moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity, as well as moments that will ma...more

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“And yes, the Hemingways, the Fitzgeralds, the Faulkners and the Capotes. Drank while writing. Drink next to the typewriter. But the longer I lived in Brooklyn, the more writers I met, and I guess I was just too drunk to put it together before but now I realized about half of them were sober. So you could be a writer and be sober. Very interesting” — 2 people liked it

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Fiction Ruined My Family

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