Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated

Arngrim has had a lot of darkness in her life. That she can face it with humor and mostly genuine positivity is kind of amazing. I was one of those little girls who loved Little House, both the books and the show, and I probably would have hated Arngrim for her tormenting of Laura. As a grown woman, I can definitely see the benefits of learning from a bitch, and maybe we all need a little bit of a Nellie in us! I would definitely recommend this for Arngrim's humor, resilience, and her interesting POV of that time in Hollywood.

Well this is way more entertaining than I would have thought possible from a memoir by an actress who played a second tier character on a TV show in the '70s. Arngrim has a dark, caustic wit which she applies liberally to herself, her family and her castmates. She shares dark secrets and set gossip but leavens it all with a positive tone and outlook. Sure, Melissa Sue Anderson becomes the butt of a running joke and her brother is deservedly castigated, but Arngrim never crosses over into the realm of sheer cruelty practiced by the character she is famous for playing.

Best LOL revelation of the book: the reason Jonathan Gilbert only read the pages of the Little House scripts with his lines.

This was a superb little book (too short!) that had me laughing in all the right places, and not scaring the cats.

For those expecting a Tell-All you might be slightly disappointed. Instead, it's a Tell-Just-Enough -- a wonderful synopsis of the tribulations of a child actor who had the eyes of the world on her for seven years, watching her every move. That she survived to become such a delightfully stable, funny and compassionate person defies all the odds; and yet, Alison Arngrim is all those things, and more.

Her acerbic wit is razor sharp and refreshing in such a work. The usual memoirs run in monotones, the writers lugubriously bewailing their assorted injustices and afflictions. Arngrim chooses to stand tall and deliver an show more in-your-face non-apologia for the Nellie Olsen that resides in her.

It was Nellie Olsen, in fact, who taught her how to be a stronger version of herself, and to whose characterization she ascribes her strength. The percipience of such self-knowledge is what is especially fascinating to me -- to be so self-aware and discerning at 20, when most of us struggle our entire lives trying to find out who we are.

I enjoyed the juicy tidbits of Little House memorabilia, certainly, but more than anything, I enjoyed Alison Arngrim/Nellie Oleson delivering her acquired wisdom in a fresh and reflective mood that leaves you feeling you've just had one of the best conversations of your life with your best friend.

PS -- And for those of us who didn't like Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes Mary Ingalls, it turns out we had some percipience of our own going on there. : ) show less

I haven't had the opportunity to read any other biographies (or autobiographies) by the cast of this show. That said I found this to be a refreshing read from someone who seems to have come out of the experience with a good perspective of both her acting career and life in general. Alison Arngrim writes very matter-of-factly and laces her work with well placed humor. She covers nearly everything without being crass or over-exposing anyone. It certainly isn't your standard celebrity auto-biography. THANK GOODNESS.

This may well end up in my yearly top ten, especially as I kept laughing out loud while reading it. I've never met Ms. Arngrim (nor am I much of one to ever bother meeting celebrities) But if I had met her before this was show more published in a private mien, and I'm only going from what I read in the book, she may well have been someone I would have really enjoyed knowing - perhaps even to being a friend. She seems like a lot of fun.

Perhaps one day she'll write another book and we'll get to enjoy more of her literary talent. show less

This is an EXCELLENT memoir (autobiography? whatever.). AA is a really good writer, in the sense that a) you begin to understand what it was like to be her, b) you care about what it was like to be her, and c) she doesn't leave you hanging with things like "whatever happened to...?" I was particularly impressed with how she handled her abuse, friend's passing, and clearly totally crazy family life. It was also heartwarming how she and Melissa Gilbert have always been bffs.

And Mary was the bitch! Love it! While I'm not a real Little House fan (too wholesome for even me, DQMW fan), it made me want to watch some more episodes, now that I can truly appreciate Nellie, whose wig always terrified me more than almost anything else in Walnut Grove.

Really a top-notch biography for someone who hasn't had a published book. She is a storyteller and unafraid to expose the dark parts of her history, because not to do so would create a jumbled piece of prose. There were a few errors: she paints her brother as being much, much older than her (a teenager when she was 6 when in later chapters she would say that he was only 6 years older than her) and she remembers episodes in different order but those are minor. I would have enjoyed this biography even if I had never heard of Nellie Oleson.

Reading this and Melissa Anderson's book back-to-back was really illuminating. Melissa's doesn't come close. They may as well have been working on different TV shows. With Alison you get the picture that show more she accepted the fact that her role as Nellie Oleson may have held her back from other jobs and decided to make it the best thing that happened to her in her life. And as a fan, isn't that what you want to hear? So much nicer than those actors who mumble about being typecast and disappear in a black cloud of despair.

Also important in Alison's book is the work she did for the AIDS movement and in changing the law in California to afford more protection for children who were sexually abused by family members. She is truly someone to emulate. show less

Growing up, I wasn't a huge fan of "Little House", even though I was exactly in the aimed-for demographic. I thought Michael Landon was a bit smarmy (and beardless, worse yet!) and the show took waaay too many liberties with the books. (I was a picky purist, even then.) I stopped watching even sporadically when Mary got married. Let's face it, Mary's life was over when she lost her sight--even Laura said towards the end of her life that their parents never got over the tragedy--and she spent the rest of her days tatting lace and beading vases in the front parlor. I think Landon could have given his audience a bit of hard-nosed frontier reality--but he chose not to do so. Ahem. Well, since this is not supposed to be a critique of Michael show more Landon's choices as a producer and director but rather of Alison Arngrim's autobiography--let's just say I was in the "loved Nellie" camp. She was the only thing that made the show bearable and kept it from being so sticky-sweet that you could have distilled it and poured it into a humming-bird feeder. Long live Nellie! I used to turn the TV off when I saw that it was going to be a Nellie-less episode.

Even though I had fond memories of Alison Arngrim's sneering performances, I hesitated picking up her autobiography. Oh, boy. Yet another washed-up child actor's reminiscences of a long-off-the-air TV show. Could anything be more pathetic? Added to this were the allegations of sexual abuse by her brother. Was it just a sensationalistic ploy to get people to read her book? I decided to give it a try anyway, since it had been recommended to me, and it seemed the type of frivolous read of which I don't do enough. Besides, everyone needs a bag of Doritos once in a while.

Well, it did turn out to be more than that. Arngrim's book is both snappily and thoughtfully written. Yes, it did have those fun "fast-food" sort of anecdotes that makes people keep turning the pages. Here's her first encounter in the make-up trailor with Melissa Gilbert:

"....she looked as if she might fit into my purse-and could chew her way out if she had to...then came her stern warning, delivered with the intensity of an Edward G. Robinson in the vocal range of Shirley Temple. 'And whatever you do, you watch out for that Melissa Sue Anderson. She's evil and I hate her.'...it was as if we were suddenly in the middle of a really bad prison movie with an all-midget cast. We had just been told to 'watch our backs' by someone who looked like a talking Hobby Holly Doll."


Well, did it actually happen that way? Who knows--one would like to think so, though perhaps there was a bit of dramatic embellishment. And of course, she has plenty to say about the underwear-forgoing Michael Landon and the rest of the cast.(Michael Landon's words on the increasingly divergent-from-the book plot lines: "Have you ever read those books? There's a whole chapter on frying an apple fritter! I can't film frying an apple fritter!") Plus there are some wonderful sketches of the crew and make-up artists, which was actually my favorite part of the book.All this is delivered in a tone that is a bit gossipy yet not mean-spirited; time has given her enough distance to give her some perspective without reducing it to mellow haze.

Arngrim extends the same sharp, yet clear-eyed regard to her benevolently neglectful parents and her older brother. She gives enough detail on her brother's six years of sexual assaults so that you feel you understand what she went through without feeling like a voyeur. And she's refreshingly candid on using her type-casting to work to her advantage on her work for AIDS and child protection charities.

"Survivor" is a tired word that is used too often, especially for this sort of Hollywood biography. Yet if anyone personifies being able to overcome the odds, it is Alison Arngrim. Here's hoping she can continue a productive and meaningful life. Recommended for anyone curious about reading a well-written account of an unusual childhood and beyond--and not just for "Little House" fans. show less