"Strangers always love my mother," Ann August tells us at the start of Anywhere But Here. "And even if you hate her, can't stand her, even if she's ruining your life, there's something about her, some romance, some power. She's absolutely herself. No matter how hard you try, you'll never get to her. And when she dies, the world will be flat, too simple, reasonable, fair." Indeed, over the course of the dozen or so years chronicled in Mona Simpson's first novel, Ann and everyone else related to the charming, delusional Adele learn this the hard way. Ann does hate her at times; Adele does indeed come pretty close to ruining Ann's life on numerous occasions, or at least scarring it, and yet, ultimately, it isn't possible not to love her. As Ann puts it: "The thing about my mother and me is that when we get along we're just the same."This is a woman who uproots her child from Wisconsin and moves to Los Angeles, leaving behind a dull husband (not Ann's father--who wandered off long ago but makes appearances here in memories), under the premise that life will be beautiful and Ann will become a famous television star. But her lifelong dream and goal ("It was our secret, a nighttime whispered promise" turns out, like so many things in the Augusts' lives, to be lackluster when it becomes reality. Adele merely feeds on fantasy and drags her daughter along.Nevertheless, it's hard not to worship her. We hear from her mother, her sister, from Ann, and finally from Adele herself, and no matter how she's used people, what trouble she's gotten into, or what lies she's told--and there are plenty of all three--a certain amount of awe always remains. When we come upon Ann's proclamation that "it's always the people like my mother, who start the noise and bang things, who make you feel the worst; they are the ones who get your love." It's startling to realize how heartily we agree with her. Anywhere But Here gives truth to this statement in a way that few books ever have. It's dense with misery and amazement all tangled together--a realistic and thus rare portrait of love. --Melanie Rehak
Mona Simpson's debut novel is pretty much a memoir, which could be titled "This Girl's Life." It's a tale of a single mother (Adele) and her daughter (Ann) and the challenges they face over the years, first in Wisconsin where Adele's from and later in SoCal when Ann's a tween/teen and her mother has delusions of making her a child star. Of interest to me, which I discovered only after starting this book, is that Simpson is married to Richard Appel, producer of The Simpsons, hence the character Mona Simpson who is Homer's mom. More interesting, however, is that Steve Jobs is her long-lost brother (He'd been given away for adoption before she was born and the two never knew they were siblings until well into adulthood). Their father was a Syrian academic who left Simpson's mother when she was three (she's since written a book about her search for him).Anyway, much of the autobiographical info regarding Simpson's upbringing makes its way into the book. The book is written in first person but via three separate POV's: Ann's, Adele's and Carol's (Adele's sister and Carol's aunt). Most of the book takes the voice of Ann, retrospectively, and is ably done. The daily struggles the girl and her mother endured--always trying to live above their means while barely staying afloat, are effectively drawn in compelling fashion. However, the other sections of the book are done in summary, and seem largely pointless, providing background to gaps in the story which aren't worth filling. I'd suggest skipping those sections altogether, it would make the book a much more pleasurable read...
What do You think about Anywhere But Here (2015)?
This gets 3.5 stars. It wasn't bad, but it just completely lacked structure. It meanders along episodically for several hundred pages, not necessarily chronologically, but not with any meaningful pattern of switching between past, present, and future. It was too long for a book in which very little actually happens, and there were so many characters and digressions that took up hundreds of pages but barely figured into the story at all. The last chapter is kind of a cheap, tacked on Happy Ending that did not ring true. So, all in all, disappointing. And yet this was a bestseller. Can someone explain that?
—Diana
The writing was good, and the story held my interest. However, mother "accidentally" making out with her young song for over a minute with her hand "accidentally" resting on his crotch. A mother telling her twelve year old daughter to go out naked to tell her step father and one of his male friends goodnight. The mother tried insisting. It was her 12yr old daughter that had the sense to refuse. Then this daughter takes inappropriate naked pictures of poor kids in the neighborhood, and while doing so, uses this and mild sexual touching to "feel power over them". It goes on and on. This author seems to have some major kiddie sexual issues or past experiences that she should probably deal with.
—Valarie
The prescience of the child narrator convinces me that this book is based on a true story -- the narrator is really an adult looking way back at a childhood spent with her (delightfully? realistically? intolerably?) psycho mother.What I really wanted to find out, and what kept the pages turning, is what is Ann really like? As she grows up, she's increasingly able to distance herself from her mother, in various ways and sometimes more powerfully than others. But how does she turn out? Normal? Psycho? Normal with some indelible stamps of a psycho mother? I'd really like to know, but in the end (quite literally), this book was about Adele, and you never get to learn much about Ann. Like it or not -- and I suppose most people don't -- Adele always manages to get the last word.
—Kristin
