Alice Carrière tells the story of her unconventional upbringing in Greenwich Village as the daughter of a remote mother, the renowned artist Jennifer Bartlett, and a charismatic father, European actor Mathieu Carrière.
Vivid, perfect details in abundance ... The things Carrière tries to capture...s not something that is easy to describe. But Carrière does it brilliantly and thoroughly ... With bullseye details and inspired writing, Carrière draws the reader into her story.
Carrière provides a compelling depiction of dissociative disorder ... As Carrière catalogues her troubles, I found myself wanting more authorial reflection on the vagaries of memory ... The account also suffers at times from a lack of self-awareness ... When Carrière sticks to that "plain language of feeling" in her narrative, she is a moving and effective writer. But at times "the flourishes of violent imaginings" (awkward or absurd metaphors, odd or incorrect word choices) mar her memoir ... The book’s final third is its strongest, in large part because Carrière mostly abandons her attempts at lilting and loftiness, sheds the fussy, metaphor-dazed diction and simply tells us what happened.
Remarkable ... The strength of her writing is only occasionally interrupted by repetition, and by a few graphic passages that might have benefited from a lighter touch ... There is historical value in this story of the daughter of two artists, whose personal lives we can now appreciate separately from their art. It is also refreshing to read a memoir of dysfunctional family and psychological disorder that is not self-pitying but raw, filled with sorrow, dark humor and sharp observation.
