For such a thoroughly dispiriting saga, Earth to Moon is somehow an unconscionably entertaining read. This is in no small part thanks to the prose ... She emerges to claim her own narrative at last. And what a narrative it is.
The memoir starts to lose its steam and its candor ... Zappa paints a heartbreaking picture of the childhood that shaped her, but she’s less specific and present as her story moves into adolescence and adulthood and she tries to figure out how to deal with her trauma ... Comes across less as a book than as a plea from that wounded child, still searching for someone to see her and recognize that she’s in pain.
Eye-popping ... There is an eye-rolling generosity to this sad and funny tale that might not have been so easily accessed in earlier times ... The book remains engrossing even as the music fades.
Much of this is a familiar, Mommie Dearest-style tale of childhood horror at the hands of Hollywood parents, written in the present historic tense and reaching towards an inevitable form of self-realisation. But it is lifted up because Moon Unit is, beyond the therapy-speak, very funny.
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Even a flat account of life with the Zappas would be intriguing, but Earth to Moon is told with such vigor and intensity that you wonder why the author (now in her mid-fifties) took so long to get around to it ... Earth to Moon is extraordinarily well written. A TV director is 'a mealy apple of a man in a black turtleneck.' London taxis are 'swanky.' Moon’s Empire State Building night-light 'casts a pointy shadow on the ceiling.' This is a wonderful book: lyrical, moving and funny.
