First published 2013
Wendy Lawless grows up with a mother who embodies danger wrapped in elegance. Georgann Rea prefers mink coats to maternal warmth and keeps a lit Dunhill cigarette perpetually in her holder. She sleeps with men and women indiscriminately, despises children and dogs, and possesses the glacial beauty of a Hitchcock leading lady with matching cruelty. From their apartment at the Dakota in 1960s Manhattan to London's fashionable neighborhoods, Wendy and her younger sister learn to navigate their mother's theatrical breakdowns, suicide attempts, and relentless pursuit of glamorous fulfillment. Georgann skips PTA meetings for cocktail parties and treats motherhood as an inconvenient interruption to her quest for excitement. Wendy must develop extraordinary resilience to survive this real life Holly Golightly who transforms into something closer to Joan Crawford's wire hanger wielding character. The memoir captures how two girls managed daily survival while their unstable mother chased delusions of grandeur across continents, leaving emotional wreckage in her wake.
Genres: abuse, 20th-century, autobiography, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: dysfunctional-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Dakota, London, Manhattan
Period: 1960s
304 pages · Kindle Edition · Gallery Books
Content warnings: abuse, emotional-abuse