With or without you : a memoir

Title:

Author:

Ruta, Domenica.

Personal Author:

Ruta, Domenica.

ISBN:

9780812993240

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : Spiegel & Grau, c2013.

Physical Description:

210 p. ; 25 cm.

Abstract:

A wryly comic, deeply emotional memoir of the author's relationship with her flamboyant drug dealer mother describes her misfit youth and eventual escape into writing before succumbing to addiction and resolving to leave her past in order to survive.

Personal Subject:

Ruta, Domenica.

Subject Term:

Children of drug addicts -- Massachusetts -- Biography.

Drug addicts -- Massachusetts -- Biography.

Genre:

Autobiography.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Main Library	Book	362.29 R972	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

A haunting, unforgettable mother-daughter story for a new generation--the debut of a blazing new lyrical voice

Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, unforgiving town north of Boston, in a trash-filled house on a dead-end road surrounded by a river and a salt marsh. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious local figure, was a drug addict and sometimes dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, and whose highbrow taste was at odds with her hardscrabble life. And yet she managed, despite the chaos she created, to instill in her daughter a love of stories. Kathi frequently kept Domenica home from school to watch such classics as the Godfather movies and everything by Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, telling her, "This is more important. I promise. You'll thank me later." And despite the fact that there was not a book to be found in her household, Domenica developed a love of reading, which helped her believe that she could transcend this life of undying grudges, self-inflicted misfortune, and the crooked moral code that Kathi and her cohorts lived by.

With or Without You is the story of Domenica Ruta's unconventional coming of age--a darkly hilarious chronicle of a misfit '90s youth and the necessary and painful act of breaking away, and of overcoming her own addictions and demons in the process. In a brilliant stylistic feat, Ruta has written a powerful, inspiring, compulsively readable, and finally redemptive story about loving and leaving.

Praise for With or Without You

"A luminous, layered accomplishment." -- The New York Times Book Review

"A singular new coming-of-age memoir traces one girl's twisting path up from mean streets (and parents) to the reflective life of a writer. . . . The burgeoning canon of literary memoir . . . begets another winner in Domenica Ruta's searing With or Without You . . . . [A] gloriously gutsy memory-work." -- Elle

"Stunning . . . comes across as a bleaker, funnier, R-rated version of The Glass Castle and marks the arrival of a blazing new voice in literature." --Entertainment Weekly

"Valiant and heartbreaking." -- Bust

"Powerful . . . Ruta found an unconventional voice, a scary good mixture of erudition and hardened street smarts. Her writing is also, as they say in Danvers, wicked funny--though in her case wicked is more an adjective than an intensifier. . . . [ With or Without You ] hums with jangled energy and bristles with sharp edges. . . . Ruta writes with unflinching honesty." -- Slate

"Bracingly funny and poignant." --The Boston Globe

"Exceedingly powerful." --Booklist

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

The memoir of the emancipation of a daughter from her drug-dealer, addict mother. Despite the hardships she endured as a child, Ruta demonstrates a deep and loving bond with her mother. Other family members meander in and out of the narrative, but it is Ruta's mom who features the most prominently in these stories of coming-of-age during the 1980s. Marathon movie nights spent tucked in bed counterpoint days of poverty, trash-strewn rooms, drug dealing and her mother high on cocaine, OxyContin or other drugs. "Mum never distinguished between physical and emotional pain," writes the author, "especially when she had a pill that could cure both." Ruta holds nothing back as she realistically and tenderly portrays her childhood in Massachusetts, whether she's writing about school events at her Catholic school, her mother's ascent as a millionaire and subsequent loss of money due to drug use, or the sexual abuse at the hands of a pedophile, one of her mother's friends. Ruta also delves into her own drug and alcohol abuse, her desire to make something of herself and how she crawled back into society: "I used to be a miserable, spiritless, insecure egomaniac who smelled like whiskey. Now I am a well-intentioned, sometimes volatile, even more insecure egomaniac who smells like coffee." It is this kind of exposure, and the use of dark humor and explicit language, that makes the book so intriguing, and Ruta shows how a strong maternal bond at an early age can lead to forgiveness regardless of the circumstances. A sharp portrayal of recovery from a lifetime of pitfalls and the love that held it all together.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.