Anywhere but Here

Unpleasant book about an odd woman and her child who inherits much of her mother's pathology. Made more unpleasant by researching the author, who discovered she was Steve Jobs' half-sister when he showed up suddenly in her life. A film made from this is equally unpleasant and is, in fact, sugar-coating the book.

Feels exploitive on too many levels.

This was an interesting read! I picked this up on a whim when I saw it in Bonnie's Op Shop, I had no idea the movie that came out in the late 00's was based on a book.
We follow the story of Ann & her single-mother Adele as they make their way across America from Wisconsin to California so Ann can become a child star before it's too late.
At the beginning of the book, I felt really sorry for Ann as she's subjected to Adele's flighty ways & whims. Actually I felt sorry for her through most of the book because you get the sense that Ann doesn't really get much of a say in the decision making process. She just blindly follows her Mum as kids do because she's her mum. And as the story unfolds I was left wondering what happened to Adele to show more make her so flighty & hare-brained. I never really figured that out...
Through the first half of the story I felt really displaced as Ann would bounce back & forth between her childhood in Wisconsin & the present in California. Later on things start to fall into place but it wasn't until the last quarter of the story I actually started to feel a bit more comfortable & understand the hows & whys of the story.
Anyway, as stories go, even though it made me extremely uncomfortable it's a good story & really is a good eaxmple of family life if a little over dramatic. show less

Read during Spring 2002

I don't understand the reviews on the cover that said 'funny'. More tragic and disturbing. The different points of view was an interesting way to tell the story but Ann's story is really the most interesting one and Carol's narratives can be disruptive, even if they fill in the blanks. It seemed to complete peter out at the end but the final 3 or 4 pages of Adele's narrative blindsided me. She is a difficult character and I didn't find anything sympathetic in her, although I think I was supposed. Promising but didn't quite make it. This is the first book I released through Book Crossing.....

Ann August’ mother refuses to be ordinary...the very thing that her adolescent daughter longs for most. Adele August, mother of Ann, is a high spirited woman who doesn't fit the profile of a mom. "Strangers always love my mother," Ann tells us early on. Ann is sometimes torn between loving and hating her mother, as are most teen-age girls, but most mothers aren’t grandiose, manipulative, and narcissistic. Ann states,”it’s always people like my mother who start the noise, and bang things, who make you feel the worst; they are the ones who get your love.” ; which by common knowledge is the response pattern of most abused people and animals for that matter.
Adele yearns for a life in California, where life will be beautiful and show more Ann will become a famous television star. But her lifelong dream and goal turns out, like many things in the Augusts' lives, to be lackluster when it becomes reality.
She pushes Ann towards a direction she thinks will be great for her, wanting to give her daughter a life she didn't have. She forces Ann to become the adult and to be the one to think logically.
Anywhere But Here is dense with misery and amazement all tangled together--a realistic and thus rare portrait of love. show less

I've had this book for years and decided to read it cause it was in Nancy Pearl's Book Lust. There were some parts that were okay, but I wasn't a huge fan of this book. The mother, Adele August, drove me nuts! I hated this woman and I've seen women similar to her in real-life! A girl back in high school did an essay/project on it and she thought it was funny. I didn't find it to be really funny at all, and I was expecting it to be a bit different.

A mother with big dreams moves with her daughter from Wisconsin to Beverly Hills. It took forever to get through this meandering story told from different characters' viewpoints. Maybe the movie is more compelling.

Half the dysfunction STILL would have been too much. This book was such a downer. Adele, the mother, was a complete flake. Ann, her daughter, always overcomes--somehow or other. Author sometimes abruptly changes the course of action. There were several times I thought I had turned ,multiple pages and lost the plot line, but no. I was reading consecutive pages, just another random plot twist from nowhere.