Very Good
mother cruel alcoholic — she also — face her demons
Pg 247 Clean up your side of fence — Accept things as they come, stay in the moment, don't react to circumstance beyond control
Pg 376 Rage — old friend Protector — always getting Stronger

Her mother, Gloria, was a brainy knockout whose fierce wit could shock an audience into hilarity or silence. Her father was James Jones, the award-winning author of From Here to Eternity and other acclaimed novels of World War II . Kaylie Jones grew up amid such family friends as William Styron, Irwin Shaw, James Baldwin, and Willie Morris, and socialized with the likes of Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Kurt Vonnegut. When her father died from heart failure complicated by years of drinking, sixteen-year-old Kaylie was broken and lost, which in turn left her powerless to withstand her mother's withering barbs and shattering criticism, or to halt Gloria's further descent into the bottle—or that of her own.

I was not familiar with James Jones's novels or Kaylie's, but after reading this memoir, I'd like to read more. Kaylie Jones looks at her life unflinchingly, but without the know-it-all tone some memoirs have. At the end, she is still questioning, but she has also learned a lot, and she's presented what she's learned in a such a way as to make a clear picture of a convoluted life. ( )

It's very rare that a memoir can have the ability to change your life. "Lies My Mother Never Told Me" will make you laugh, cry, and leave you in awe. Kaylie Jones' is a true treasure! Her life of heartbreak, addiction, and ultimately of hope is as beautiful as any book I've read so far. ( )

My first exposure to Kaylie Jones came years ago with her very autobiographical novel, A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES, which I liked very much. And which was made into quite a successful Hollywood film. As the daughter of writer James Jones (whose first novel, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, firmly established him in the early 1950s as an important writer of his generation), Kaylie Jones enjoyed a rather privileged childhood in the rarefied international literary community of Paris in the 1960s. Her memoir, LIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME, finally reveals how seriously this childhood and youth were marred by parents who were alcoholics and somewhat negligent in their parental duties. Jones's mother Gloria was perhaps most guilty in that she seemed simply incapable of exressing her love for her daughter. The author recognizes, years later, that this failing in Gloria was probably the result of neglect and abuse at the hands of her own mother, who she said she "hated." The other tragedy of Kaylie's life was the death of her famous father when she was only sixteen.

The memoir is something of a tell-all, filled with names of the rich and famous from the celebrity world of the time. For example, she tells of her father's friend William Styron propositioning her, noting that "... if my father had known that Bill was going to proposition his nineteen-year-old, grief-stricken daughter, he would have beaten the living s**t out of him, sick or not." This anecdote seems to confirm the story that Anne Roiphe told of her own affair with the long-married and famously philandering Styron in her memoir, ART & MADNESS.

In yet another story, Kaylie tells of meeting her father's high school sweetheart, Annis Flemming, during a visit to Robinson, Illinois, who described the young James Jones as "a gentle, fragile boy ... He was a bit of a show-off, but that's not really who he was inside. He was hurting so bad when he came back after the war ... All the boys were like that when they came back." This assessment seems to parallel certain contradictory descriptions of a young Hemingway after the the Great War. Gertrude Stein often commented that Hemingway's macho displays of bravado were an act to mask his sensitive side. (Read Lyle Larsen's STEIN & HEMINGWAY.)

I had mixed feelings about this memoir. When she talks of her father and their special relationship, the book is at its best. In the second half (or more) of the book, when she begins to speak of her problems with her unloving - and unlovable -alcoholic mother, and then her own alcoholism and subsequent reform,the narrative sometimes slips into self-pity and becomes tediously repetitious. There is much of the proud mother in the author when she speaks of her daughter Eyrna, as well as pride of accomplishment in her struggles to earn her black belt. But the name-dropping later seems to become more obvious and unnecessary, slowing the pace of the book. For example, I wondered if it was really necessary, for example, in describing her father's friendship with Willie Morris, to mention that Donna Tartt and John Grisham had been students of Morris at Mississippi. And there are other similar name-dropping digressions scattered throughout the book - Winston Groom, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Frank Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, etc. Being an avid reader and filmgoer, some I found interesting, but not all.

There were also, however, very poignant moments which made me nearly weep, such as her sadness at watching her mother's gradual deterioration which included memory loss. I remembered my own mother describing how her mother (my grandmother) always loved to talk of the past, until one day, in her early 90s, she began to forget. My mother is 95 now, and I see it happening to her.

But as a booklover and memoirist, the passage that struck home the hardest with me was a comment Jones made as she looked over the personal bookshelves of Willie Morris the day of his funeral -

"My eyes drifted over the contents of Willie's study - books I did not know and photos of strangers. Never mind, I thought, Willie wrote it all down in his memoirs, and ... the books will endure. And we will always have Bill Styron's books, and Truman Capote's, and Faulkner's, and Tolstoy's books, and my father's books, and those, no matter what else, will always be worth fighting for."

Books. They are indeed so important. I hope she is right. "The books will endure." ( )

Memoirs seem to be hit and miss for me this year. When offered the opportunity to read Lies My Mother Never Told Me I jumped on it because, honestly, the title is great and it looked interesting. My mistake was not looking to see who it was about.

Normally this wouldn't be a big deal. Most memoirs I read are about people I've never been "introduced" to. That's the whole point of a memoir, right? Getting to know someone. It was different in this book though. Because Kaylie Jones is the daughter of a famous writer (James Jones), there was a lot.. and I do mean a lot... of name-dropping in this book. Mostly names I'd never heard of due to the writers/actors/directors being people outside of the circle I am usually interested in.

This would not have been a big deal to me, I'm always happy to expand that circle, if I hadn't felt so put off by everything she was writing. I felt as if she was writing to impress and as if she was just a bit whiny, to be honest. While I could feel sympathy for her and how she was raised, still.. she was the recipient of so many things that most of us never get to see or do. This especially struck home when, while discussing her mothers estate, she and her husband were "okay" so long as her daughter received a private education and ivy league college.

Each section of the book begins with a short story told by her mother. I think these stories are where the title comes in (although I can't be absolutely sure of that). Most of the stories went right over my head or were un-interesting. The only one that got a chuckle from me was the Frank Sinatra one.

I'll shelve this memoir as another in a growing group of memoirs that seems to be written for a certain niche of people. To anyone unfamiliar with James Jones' work, as I am, it just doesn't carry anything of interest. ( )