Chanel Bonfire

Mommy dearest had nothing on the evil manipulating mother in this memoir. My childhood seems like a cake walk in comparison. Wendy Lawless recounts her childhood and teenage years trying to come to terms with her mother; a woman who threatened to kill her two daughters, who told her she should have had abortions instead of having kids, who tried to sleep with Wendy's boyfriend, who threw out all their toys, who told her kids their father hated them and never wanted to see them again, and many more terrible evil things.

Despite being horribly depressing, this memoir is moving and intriguing and the optimism that Wendy managed to hold onto is moving. It's a short memoir that will make you want to hold your kids and tell them how much you show more love them and really sincerely mean it. show less

‘Chanel Bonfire’ is a tale of growing up with a mentally ill mother who, I suspect, was incapable of love. Her entire life was about manipulating people and seeking adoration, even from children too young to understand. While she wasn’t a wire coat hanger wielding physical abuser (most of the time), she was the master of screwing with minds.

The beautiful Georgann Rea was an extreme example of Narcissism. Her life was one big illusion: that she was loved, that she was rich, that she knew the ‘right’ people, that every man wanted her, that she was young forever. No one was allowed to disrupt those illusions; if one did, they were cut out of her life. One of those disruptions caused her to run away to Europe with her two show more daughters, severing all contact with their father. Lawless would not have contact with him again until she was an adult. The girls basically raise themselves in a hostile environment. Sometimes the environment was quite luxurious, but it was always a minefield for Lawless, who had to police her every word and gesture to avoid setting off her mother. The two girls counted the days until they graduated high school and could escape.

This sounds like a grim read. In the hands of many writers, it easily could have been. But Lawless has a dry wit, and the book is riveting. I kept thinking to myself that Georgann couldn’t do anything worse, and yet she always did. What amazes me is that the girls turned out well- very well. Rather than damaging their psyches, it almost seems like the trials of their childhood made them stronger. show less

Chanel Bonfire was an amazing read. I’ve always been infatuated with reading true stories about people growing up with a narcissistic parent(s) so I knew I needed to read this memoir. I devoured this book in a matter of hours—I couldn’t put it down. I loved how in their own right both Wendy and Robin overcame their mother and their situation. The writing was flawless and captivating.

This book was addicting because Lawless' life is so unbelievable it reads like fiction. Lawless and her sister grow up living with a psychotic mother who makes their lives unstable. They are dragged all over the world following their mother as their mother puts her needs and wants before her daughters' basic necessities. There are parts of this book that were truly shocking. In the end, I admire Lawless and her sister for their bravery and strength to move on from such difficult childhoods.

Great read! Honest and painful memoir, with a few laughs sprinkled in for good measure.

Wendy Lawless and her sister, Robin, grew up with an unstable Grace Kelly-ish mother who drank and drank and then, unfortunately for all involved, drank some more. Their beautiful and conniving mother also collected a menagerie of men, most who were able to afford many splendid things such as luxury cars, homes, private schools, vacations. However, the one thing that money could never attain was their mother's happiness or the ability to care for her children responsibly, without the neglect that the girls suffered throughout their young lives. Oh! They're are some horrifying recollections from Wendy that just make me utterly sad that some women are show more able to give birth and call themselves mothers, regardless if they want to be a mother or not. Wendy and Robin's mother did NOT want to be a mother and she let her children know that more often than necessary. There is a Christmas that Lawless recalls in the book that totally broke my heart for these two little girls. How could a mother be so cruel? Lawless writes her memoir with great depth and emotion but never appears to be whining and has a lot more patience for her mother's antics than I could ever manage.

Lawless's upbringing was so very different from mine. I had loving parents who don't have a selfish bone in their bodies. I cannot imagine growing up in a household such as Wendy and Robin. I am sorry that they suffered the way that they did but I am glad that Lawless had the courage to tell her story and share the painful details. What I am really grateful for is that sometimes tragic stories DO have happy endings, in one form or another, if one is willing to work at happiness and learns to let go and break the cycle. Well done, Wendy Lawless! I think it is safe to say that with this book you have exorcised the demons of the past. show less

Growing up with an alcoholic, narcissistic, and mentally ill mother was by no means easy for Wendy and her younger sister Robin. Keeping the severe dysfunction hidden behind closed doors was even harder. Wendy, the dutiful older daughter, became the glue that held her family together despite the neglectful and manipulative ways of her mother Georgann. Robin on the other hand, had very little patience for her mother’s shenanigans.
Always on the lookout for a rich man and living beyond her means, Georgann moved the girls to New York, London, and Boston (just to name a few) in search of the life she felt she deserved. All the while Georgann maintained that the girls’ biological father had a new family and no longer wanted them. show more Manipulation was her forte, telling the girls things like “My doctor thinks that if you and your sister appreciated me more, I wouldn’t be so depressed” and “…my doctor thinks that it’s because of you girls that I drink”. As Georgann’s behavior became more erratic and dangerous, the two sisters did all they could to break free from their mother’s grip and live their own lives.
Similar to The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, this is a memoir loaded with family dysfunction that reads like a novel and is told with self-reflective honesty and more than a little humor. show less

First I want to thank Gallery Books and First Reads for sending me a copy of Chanel Bonfire. If you want to read my review on my blog the link is just below, or if you want to stay right here I've copied and pasted it. Enjoy.

http://booksplusmore.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/chanel-bonfire-wendy-lawless/

This is a memoir about the author's rather insane childhood. Not insane because the author is one of those hyper ADD kids that runs away to a circus, but because her mother is, to put it bluntly, completely psychotic. We're talking level 9 meltdown kind of psychotic. Lock the kids in the closet for 10 hours kind of psychotic. Drunkenly drive the car into the middle of her daughter's graduation and then blame the police for making a scene kind show more of psychotic. It's intense. And, if it was written differently, it would probably be legitimately frightening.

But what I like about Lawless's style is that she understands just how ridiculous the events of her past are. She doesn't look back on them with a morbid woe-is-me attitude (even though she would be totally justified to take that stance). Instead, she laughs. She makes little jokes, tells it like it is, and gives it a little magic. It's really the best method to take with these traumatic memoirs too, because, in all honesty, it's just not that fun to listen to someone complain for 200 pages, even if they should be able to. So, for all of you aspiring memoir writers, take a page out of Lawless's book.

My hesitation in recommending this book has less to do with its actual quality and more to do with its genre. Sure, the writing gets a little bit corny every now and again (stuff like little did I know it was only beginning...), but it's such a personal story that I don't really have a problem with some corniness. No, the real problem here is the same problem faced by all memoirs written by non-famous people—it can be hard to connect to a story without any prior knowledge of the person. A lot happens in these pages and there just isn't a ton of time to hear about who Lawless really becomes. So you can put yourself in her place and see how terrible her situation is, but you never really get to know her beyond the realm of her mother's madness. In the end, you get a remarkable story but don't get great characters to go along with it. show less