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Loading... Stray: A Memoirby Stephanie Danler
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. There are dozens of memoirs out there that follow the same theme. Growing up with horrible, highly dysfunctional parents, resulting with the now grown, damaged, adult child who makes a mess of her own life. I don’t mean to be glib about it but it is a far too common scenario. The difference in this book is the author is a good writer which made all the difference. She took a misery memoir and turned it into a pretty interesting and touching story. I think I’m going to check out this author’s debut novel, Sweetbitter. There are certain types of books that live with you for a long time, books that took courage to write. EDUCATED, GLASS CASTLE, WILD are among these and so is STRAY. Books topics seem to go in cycles and with the publication of HOLLYWOOD PARK and STRAY we are seeing well-crafted stories about surviving a childhood where normal was not part of the picture in growing up. As I was reading this, the disjointedness of the story bothered me as each short chapter jumped from place to place and from time to time, but that’s remaining true to a story that tells of such a confused childhood and learning to transition into a successful adulthood. no reviews | add a review
"From the author of the best-selling Sweetbitter comes an intimate, searingly honest memoir of growing up the child of addicts, of how that turbulent, often harrowing experience has affected her at every stage of her life, and of how she has struggled to transcend this unwanted legacy. When Sweetbitter was published to great success, the author knew she should be happy, but she felt incapable of it, emotionally shut down. She knew too that the roots of her inability to feel were deep in her childhood. With some hope of finally facing down her past--of looking clearly at her parents and what she did and did not inherit from them--she returned to California after a decade away, a decade in which she'd honed the practice of apathy. Stray is an account of that remarkable emotional journey. We meet her mother: a depressed alcoholic, now mentally and physically handicapped by a tragic brain aneurysm and living in squalor; and her father: once a successful businessman, now a constantly relapsing crystal meth addict living in halfway homes and shelters. And we are with the author as she remembers and relives the most difficult events of the ten years since she left "home"--betrayals and infidelities, her own problems with drinking, an affair with a married man whose darkness mirrored her own--and as she discovers the bounds of forgiveness, of her parents, but especially of herself"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Stephanie lays bare her story before, during and after her first novel was published, beginning with a traumatic childhood with parents who were addicts. We’re there alongside Stephanie as she recounts the painful details of the neglect and abuse she endured, and the many feelings she battles as she attempts to reconcile caring for both of them when she’s in her twenties. As someone who was raised by an abusive family member, I shared many of the same feelings as Stephanie did. I was touched by the sentiment she writes that reads “being a victim but not living like you’re victimized”, as that is something I have strived to do since leaving my abuser.
Stephanie also isn’t shy about her own faults, particularly when it involves her complicated love life. She describes and reflects back on the men she has been involved with over the years, and there is one particular cringey character nicknamed “The Monster” who I inwardly shouted at her to run away from each time he entered her life.
As painful as it was to read about Stephanie’s painful past, I enjoyed getting to know more about her, and I look forward to her next work. ( )