willemite

Kaylie Jones has written a crying-from-laughter, weeping-from-sadness, can’t-put-it-down, through-a shot-glass-darkly memoir about growing up the child of literary giant James Jones. Her father’s WW II classics brought in enough income to allow the family a life of physical comfort. But alcoholism is quite resistant to a greenback cure, and both of Kaylie’s parents were afflicted, a legacy she inherited. While dad’s contribution to the world can be found in libraries across the planet, mother Gloria’s contribution was a lifetime of cruelty, control, selfishness and destructiveness along with an enormous capacity for laughter and fun. How could any child of two such parents possibly live up to the accomplishment of one parent, or survive the firestorm of the other? Apparently Kaylie Jones has come through, battle-scarred but still standing.

The social milieu in which the Jones family existed was shared by what seems like most of the major American writers of the 20th century. She drops more names than a phone book deliveryman, but there is no snooty obnoxiousness associated with this. She is not trying to build herself up by referencing the wealthy, the well-known and the accomplished among her family’s associates. The presence of these people was merely what was normal in that world. You could do worse in creating a survey course on 20th century American literature than to list the writers the Jones family knew personally. The details offered here also add insight into some of their well-known works. It might be a bit tough for a kid growing up among so many bright lights not to feel a bit overshadowed. And it is to her credit that she so clearly notes that she benefited professionally in no small quantity because of who she was rather than purely on what she had done.

Raised in Paris, fluent in French and Russian, an award-winning author of screenplays short stories and five novels, Jones managed to overcome her barriers, accept some of her advantages and, while she has not attained the acclaim of her famed parent, she has managed to succeed in her chosen profession. How many writers, whatever their parentage, can say that? Lies My Mother Never Told Me reads and entertains like a novel. It is one of the most interesting, most engaging memoirs I have read.