Book Review and Tour: Lies My Mother Never Told Me by Kaylie Jones

Title: Lies My Mother Never Told Me
Author: Kaylie Jones
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition
Publication Date: August 17, 2010
Paperback: 400 pages
ISBN: 978-0061778711
Genre: Memoir

From the Publisher:

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.

Lies My Mother Never Told Me is a beautifully written tale of personal evolution, family secrets, second chances, and one determined woman’s journey to find her own voice.

My Review:

Witty, heart wrenching and redemptive, Lies My Mother Never Told Me is a straightforward, raw and emotional look into the life of Kaylie Jones and her lifelong process of healing and coming into her own.  Jones grew up surrounded by talented, well-educated and famous people, her father James Jones was among them, whose novels are known worldwide.   Kaylie writes about her life from her childhood in Paris to present day with a dry wit and charm. At times the reading is rather emotional, allowing the reader to get a real sense of just who Kaylie Jones is, but throughout most of the book, Jones keeps her guard up. I caught glimpses of her now and again (when her father died), yet even though her memoir is a frank and honest look at her life; I found it difficult to know Kaylie. I enjoyed reading Lies My Mother Never Told Me, yet not as much as I had hoped; I found the name-dropping to be distracting.  I realise her life was filled with famous people yet she covered it so often it did become tiresome.  I do give Jones credit however, in that she does not blame her parents for and is rather quite proud of her father’s achievements, yet wants to become famous herself on her own merits.   On the surface, Lies My Mother Never Told Me appears to be a memoir about a privileged, yet verbally abused child, raised by alcoholics, and to an extent it is. However, digging deeper the reader will uncover that as the memoir progresses so does the depth and breadth of the messages Jones is trying to convey to her readers.  Jones is a talented storywriter herself, and if a reader is looking for a memoir about alcoholism, recovery, and redemption, then Lies My Mother Never Told Me may be an excellent choice.

About the Author:

Kaylie Jones is the author of five novels: A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, Speak Now, Celeste Ascending, As Soon As It Rains, and Quite The Other Way. Her novels have been translated into many languages, including French, German, Polish, Turkish, and Japanese.

Jones chairs the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, which awards $10,000 annually to an unpublished first novel. During the past 15 years, 12 of the winners have been published to impressive critical acclaim.

A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, based on Jones’s experiences growing up as the daughter of celebrated novelist James Jones (From Here To Eternity, The Thin Red Line, Whistle), was made into a Merchant-Ivory film starring Kris Kristofferson, Leelee Sobieski, Jesse Bradford, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Barbara Hershey, and Isaac de Bankole.

Jones is a graduate of Wesleyan University. She received her MFA from Columbia University and studied Russian at The Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the Pushkin Institute for Russian Studies in Moscow.

Jones currently teaches in the MFA Writing and Literature program at Stony Brook Southampton and at the Wilkes University MFA program in professional writing.

Born and raised in Paris, Jones lives in New York with her husband, daughter, and two mixed-breed mutts, Layla and Natalie.  For more information visit the author’s website, follow her on Twitter, of on Facebook.

For more reviews of the book, please follow the book tour.

I received a complimentary copy of Lies My Mother Never Told Me by Kaylie Jones from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

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