Tag: Memoir

Quick Thoughts on Recent Reads

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 30 Comments

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Publisher: Crown
Publication Date: June 2012
Categories: Thriller, Suspense
Source: Library
There isn’t much I can say about this without dropping spoilers.
It’s crazy, it’s good. Gillian Flynn thought of everything.
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publication Date: October 2012
Categories: Essays, Popular Culture
I love me some Jon Ronson. Funny, smart journalism at its finest.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Publisher: Harper
Publication Date: October 2012
Categories: Political, Suspense, Literary
Source: Thanks to the fabulous Rebecca at Love at First Book
Well deserving of the National Book Award for fiction this year. 
A beautiful tale about a beautiful family.
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication Date: September 2012
Categories: Contemporary Women, Medical
Source: Library
Another lovely book by Lisa Genova. She breaks my heart every single time.
How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: July 2012
Categories: Women, Personal Memoir
Source: Library
I didn’t finish this. No thank you Ms. Moran. I wanted to like this, but alas…
Have you read any of the above books? Love ’em? Hate ’em?

Crazy Enough by Storm Large

~ Jennifer @ The Relentless Reader ~ 5 Comments
Crazy Enough by Storm Large
Publisher: Free Press
Publication Date: January 2012
Categories: Personal Memoir, Mental Illness
Source: Thanks to Kristin Matzen at Free Press
Description via Indiebound.org:

Yes, Storm Large is her real name, though she’s been called many things. As a performer, the majority of descriptions have led with “Amazon,” “powerhouse,” “a six-foot Vargas pinup come to life.” Playboy called her a “punk goddess.” You’d never know she used to be called “Little S”—the mini-me to her beautiful and troubled mother, Suzi.

Little S spent most of her childhood visiting her mother in mental institutions and psych wards. Suzi’s diagnosis changed with almost every doctor’s visit, ranging from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder to multiple personality disorder to depression. One day, nine-year-old Little S jokingly asked one of her mother’s doctors, “I’m not going to be crazy like that, right?” To which he replied, “Well, yes. It’s hereditary. You absolutely will end up like your mother. But not until your twenties.”

Storm’s story of growing up with a mental time bomb hanging over her veers from frightening to inspiring, sometimes all in one sentence. But her strength, charisma, and raw musical talent gave her the will to overcome it all. Crazy Enough is a love song to the twisted, flawed parts in all of us.

My Thoughts:

This memoir is vulgar, honest and heartbreaking. Storm Large pulls no punches as she tells her tale of sex, drugs, rock & roll and mental illness.

I didn’t know anything about Storm Large before I started this book. I didn’t watch her on the reality show Rock Star Supernova, I hadn’t heard her music. That absolutely didn’t matter. She puts it all out there in  Crazy Enough, from her hyper-sexed childhood and drug addiction to finding her place in the world of music and performance.

Growing up in the shadow of her mother’s many illnesses (real and imagined) Miss Large lived a life that I can only describe as broken. The term “dysfunctional family” doesn’t begin to cover it.

In Crazy Enough Storm Large tells her truth in a raw and candid way.