Tag: Memoir

With or Without You by Domenica Ruta

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 14 Comments
With or Without You by Domenica Ruta
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Publication Date: February 2013
Categories: Personal Memoir, Family Relationships
Source: Random House 

Description:
Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, unforgiving town north of Boston, in a trash-filled house on a dead-end road surrounded by a river and a salt marsh. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious local figure, was a drug addict and sometimes dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, and whose highbrow taste was at odds with her hardscrabble life. And yet she managed, despite the chaos she created, to instill in her daughter a love of stories. Kathi frequently kept Domenica home from school to watch such classics as the Godfather movies and everything by Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, telling her, “This is more important. I promise. You’ll thank me later.” And despite the fact that there was not a book to be found in her household, Domenica developed a love of reading, which helped her believe that she could transcend this life of undying grudges, self-inflicted misfortune, and the crooked moral code that Kathi and her cohorts lived by.
 
With or Without You is the story of Domenica Ruta’s unconventional coming of age—a darkly hilarious chronicle of a misfit ’90s youth and the necessary and painful act of breaking away, and of overcoming her own addictions and demons in the process. In a brilliant stylistic feat, Ruta has written a powerful, inspiring, compulsively readable, and finally redemptive story about loving and leaving.

My Thoughts:

There’s nothing like a memoir by a gal with a messed up childhood to make you feel better about the way you were raised. This wasn’t the most horrendous upbringing I’ve ever read about but With or Without You made me grateful for my “normal” family.

There’s neither structure nor routine to life with Kathi. Domenica isn’t sure from one day to the next what mood she’ll find her mother in. Will she be protective and loving? Will she be out of control with anger? 

Besides the mental illness her mother was obviously suffering from there was also drug addiction. And hey, who wouldn’t share their OxyContin pills with their young daughter? 

Here you go sweetie, love ya!

While With or Without You was beautifully written I do have to mention a couple of problems I had with it. The last quarter of the book seemed a bit rushed and disjointed. Domenica suffered from addiction issues of her own but managed to graduate from college with exceptional grades, earning an MFA. I would have liked to hear more about how she pulled that off.

Despite those few issues I would absolutely recommend  this book. Read it.

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 25 Comments
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Publisher: Scribner
Publication Date: September 1996
Categories: Ethnic Cultures, Memoir, Historical
Source: My own copy
Description: 

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible, and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank’s survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig’s head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela’s Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt’s astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

My Thoughts:

Why haven’t I read this before now? I’ll let you in on a little secret about me. I avoid the hype. When the world raves about something I stay away from it. Not all the time, but most of the time. So, when this book first came out I probably put on my snooty little hat and decided not to read it until the crazy died down.

Pulitzer Prize? Hmph!

Why do I do that? Am I snobby? Do I think I’m too cool to like something that other people like? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m pissed off at myself for not reading Angela’s Ashes sooner.


What a stunning, heartbreaking piece of work it is. Oh my word. The writing is acute, vivid and just so GOOD. There were times that I laughed and laughed at some phrase by McCourt. Then there were times that I wanted to cry and cry because people kept dying. 

Omg. Please stop the sad.


What else can I say about this book that hasn’t been said a million times before? It’s glorious. It’s genius. Angela’s Ashes deserved the hype. If you haven’t read it yet please do so. You won’t regret it.