Laurel Saville survived a tumultuous childhood, trying to manage her mother's abuse, neglect, and addictions. Anne Ford, Saville's mother, was a model, artist, and fashion designer. She spent her time socializing and partying with avant garde artists in the family's Hollywood home. Saville and her brother were left to find their own way and to fend for themselves. Laurel, in particular, feels the brunt of her mother's abuse and temper tantrums.

After her mother's death, with the security of adulthood to support her, Saville is able to learn more about her family, and about her mother's past. She learns that her grandparents were not necessarily the people she believed them to be. She learns about some of the pressures her mother faced growing up.

Despite all this, I found it hard to have sympathy for Anne. Her treatment of her children was inexcusable. This was not an easy book to read. It is hard to watch Saville constantly subjected to her mother's tirades. Anne is decidedly an unfit parent. I wish that there was some sort of greater good that came out of this story, but in the end it is the tale of a decidedly unacceptable parent and the children who suffered. ( )

Rather irratic chronology.

I think I would have enjoyed this book more if it had been written more chronologically. The first half, in particular, is a bit jumbled, but events did start to fall into place by the end, giving a more rounded view of Anne Ford's life.
However, the book is not just about Anne, it is also about her daughter, Laurel, the author, and others whose lives were directly affected by Anne's day to day behaviour. Laurel and her brother brought themselves up, learning to cook and clean the house at a very early age. As young as 9 and 10 they were clearing up after their mother's drunken parties while she recovered from the previous night's hangover.
Anne Ford also squandered Laurel's inheritance from her father, a considerable sum.

I felt for Laurel, trying to understand her own background, and I could see why she had shut herself off from it for so many years. She had made a go of her life, while her mother had squandered all her benefits. Sadly this seems to have been a common problem amongst the youth that Anne Ford mixed with, although some did go on to become famous actors and artists.

The veiwpoint of Anne's cousin, Alice, was a good balance to Laurel's understanding of her mother. Alice had known Anne when she was young, beautiful and vivacious and still had a good word to say for her, which was refreshing.
There isn't any clarity about what actually happened in Anne's final days, probably because no-one really knows, but I was left feeling that the story wasn't quite complete.

The subject matter reminded me of Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters, which was a fascinating read. Unfortunately Unraveling Anne didn't grab me in quite the same way and I didn't really end up with a clear picture of how a wealthy, intelligent, beautiful young woman could end up dying in squalor.

A sad tale, that could have been more readable if it hadn't jumped about in time so much. ( )

My last review of 2011 is not one of my best books of the year. This is a very sad book about a tragic woman and her daughter who has tried valiantly to come to terms with the consequences of being Anne Ford's daughter. In the 1950s Anne Ford was beautiful, a talented fashion designer, and an artist living the Hollywood life. She gave birth to three children by two men and proceeded to neglect them for the rest of her life.

Actually Laurel Saville, the daughter, would have been better off if her mother had totally ignored her. In fact, Anne alternately criticized Laurel and abused her in fits of jealousy. Mom wanted a beautiful daughter who would fulfill her dreams, but beginning with puberty Laurel was the object of attention from the men Anne brought home and that infuriated her mother.

Anne Ford was the product of very strict upbringing. She was a beauty queen but her parents were never happy with her. She just couldn't live up to their expectations. The rest of her sad life she was free spirited, a hippy in the 60s, an artist, a drunk, and promiscuous. She thought she loved her children but was incapable of being any kind of a mother so the kids raised themselves.

Laurel lived with her father in New Jersey for some time and learned what a family was, but always suffered from want of love from her mother.

After learning of her mother's death, murder actually, Laurel tried to see another side of her life. Surely there was good in her. Her mother's friend gave her some perspective, and learning about her grandparents' story helped as well. Still, as an adult it's easy to see that Laurel will never truly know her own mother.

A very tragic story that ultimately goes nowhere. I admire the attempt, but Laurel Saville will have to live with the knowledge that it is simply a tragedy.

I received this book from Amazon Vine; it is available from Amazon.com. ( )

Laurel’s memoir reminds me again that non fiction can sometimes be way more intriguing than fiction. In Unraveling Anne she revisits her childhood to understand her mother, Anne Ford, a Southern California beauty who was an artist and fashion designer in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Anne’s spiral down into alcoholism and mental illness ends when she is homeless and brutally murdered in a burnt-out run down home she once owned. Laurel recreates her childhood memories about the chaos and emotional confusion of living with a parent losing touch with reality. The constant moving, the endless parties, and the dangerous situations her and her brothers found themselves in. So in the beginning, tentatively, she wonders how much to tell, and then realizes that her path to wholeness is part of the telling. In order to do that she disassembles parts of her mothers life, trying to find out if the stories she told her of her younger days were true: did she really date Marlon Brando? As she started writing this book, the family that could have helped her has mostly died, and the few that remain are dealing with their own issues, so she searches with the fragments she has: her mother’s artwork and art collection by then unknown artists, historical documents about her family, and her own memories of the people who traipsed through her childhood.

Be cautioned: there are many parts that are gritty, and coarse language is used in some parts. Even with that, I think this is an important book for those of us who had parents that were alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. Good insight into the process of understanding, and making peace with your past. Also an interesting book for artists and those involved with art history. This is an AmazonEncore published book, and I read it through the Vine program. ( )

Laurel Saville was raised by an alcoholic mother, one whose hands-off parenting style left Laurel largely to herself. In this book Lauren looks back at her life and the life of her mother in an attempt to come to terms with her childhood. I found this book extremely hard to read. It seems more like a therapy session than a story. There was no cohesive time-line in the book and the author ranted on and on about her horrible childhood. Overall, I thought it was self-indulgent and unreadable. ( )