Tama Janowitz’s memoir is a relentlessly cheerless and bitter collection of vignettes. Between tales of her purportedly miserly, creepy and emotionally manipulative father, who suggests that Janowitz enter a wet T-shirt contest aged 15, and her estranged and vicious brother, who tries to sue her despite he being rich and her virtually penniless, the Janowitz clan are portrayed as singularly defective. Struggling to care for her mother, who suffers from dementia (‘My mother is lying on her side with her diapers full of shit’), and fretting about her own teenage daughter, who regularly smokes marijuana, Janowitz is convinced that Tolstoy is wrong and no family is truly happy — though in fairness, she seems determined to fail to embrace happiness at all costs.
No character or situation escapes her opprobrium. There’s her brother’s wife, who insults her mother; endless disputes with everyone from irate neighbours to displeased bookkeepers; an ignorant care home nurse; a smelly, dirty stripper; ill-advised property purchases; a disastrous trip to Israel; and, throughout, the dismal state of Janowitz’s finances.
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