Small Fry
By: Lisa Brennan-Jobs / Narrated By: Eileen Stevens
Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
12 hours and 1 minute is about 12 hours too long
‘Nuff said?
Cuz Small Fry opens with a vile scene wherein Lisa, a grown Lisa, mind you, is pretty much shamed by the Rinpoche to rub her dying father’s feet. She does so, feeling put upon and burdened, but wishing everybody was out of the room so she could steal stuff. You see, Lisa doesn’t feel like a person unless she’s swiped something. She does it throughout the book, usually because she wants to feel “just like” the other person… or because she feels invisible… or because… or because. You won’t get a lot of answers as the woman is comPLETEly lacking in self-awareness. That her klepto habits are something she wants to engage in while her father is a shriveled, shrunken, dying man is fairly disgusting. BUT! It’s an apt way to start off this work of staggering self-pity.
I’m going to make this short because I think I burned a few too many brain cells after jotting down my somewhat vitriolic thoughts about Anu Bhagwati’s Unbecoming. How many other ways can I find to say that someone is incredibly self-absorbed? Does nothing but make each situation about them (As in: She wants to leave the house where the dying is taking place because it’s not feeling very satisfying).
Wait, wait, wait. I’ve digressed some. Lemme just pull things back to the beginning. Brennan-Jobs writes about pretty much Every. Single. Day. of her life for the first 10 hours; she doesn’t even turn 16 until we’ve got oh so little time to go which was a shame because that first 10 hours is chock full of a lack of maturity, naturally. Very rarely does she qualify a diatribe with, “That sounds very entitled, I know but…” so the whole narrative flows in a very childlike manner. Might as well read middle-grade fiction if you’re not going to interject even a single iota of self-awareness. It’s not until she gets to be a late teen that we get to see a smidgen of maturity.
Basically, you’ll hear a lot of: Poor me—Steve was a cold man and was unpredictable. As though most of us weren’t raised by distant parents. Poor me—We lived in small apartments when I was really little while Steve lived in mansions (Never mind the fact that he DID pay child support, and he DID buy her mother an Audi, and that her mother went on to ask for a 3 million dollar home when he said he’d buy them one). Poor me—I was so thin people kept asking me if I was anorexic (Actually, she wasn’t eating because no one would cook for her). And Poor Me—Steve only paid for my Harvard education later on; my mother had to ask him to.
I gotta say, though: Eileen Stevens does a humongously admirable job with the narration. She brings a warmth to her reading that tones down the: “Oh my God, I just wanna throttle her” thing. You don’t even realize how whiny Brennan-Jobs (And by the way, she throws around her dad’s name like CRAZY when it’ll get her something) is being until after you’ve digested the sentence just read. Like how she has so few clothes, really. Just some stuff Steve got for her at Armani, after they’d eaten at an expensive restaurant (Add to this the MANY times she expresses what a tightwad he is, and you might want to scream a bit too).
I know, I know. I read the reviews, saw the ratings, and this, my own review is gonna go against the very strong tide. So many people opined that she was wonderful, warm, funny, that her writing was superb. Me? I’m just tired after 12 freakin’ hours of her crud.
Trust me on this. Ya got a credit to exchange? Perhaps a bit o’ money burning a hole in your wallet? More importantly: Ya got TWELVE FREAKIN’ HOURS of free time you could use to bliss out on a Memoir? There are better, muuuuch better out there. Preferably written by an adult…
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