Snowflakes in a Blizzard | Review of "This Never Happened"
Review was originally published 10 September 2019 @ Snowflakes in a Blizzard Blog
This week’s other featured books, “New Land Same Sky,” by C. Fong Hsiung and “Parse,” by Ruth Baumann, can be found by scrolling down below this post, or by clicking the author’s name on our Authors page.
THE BOOK: This Never Happened
PUBLISHED IN: Feb, 2019
THE AUTHOR: Liz Scott
THE EDITOR: Eve Connell
THE PUBLISHER: University of Hell Press
SUMMARY: This Never Happened is a genre-bending memoir, told in a non-linear way using photographs, letters, and lists. This is a spare work…alternatively heartbreaking and darkly comic. Like an archeological dig, this memoir goes in search of the answers to the mysteries of my family. It’s an unflinching quest to uncover the truth, leaving no one, including myself, unexamined. In the end, it is about the challenge of making peace with questions that will never be answered and the struggle to forgive.
THE BACK STORY: Over the years when people have heard the stories of my family I have consistently received this feedback: you should write a book. While my parents were alive, the emotional and psychological noise was so loud it was nearly impossible to get the narrative distance I needed to figure how how to tell the story of my very odd and dysfunctional family. I also felt that it would be needlessly unkind, especially to my troubled mother, to even consider writing this book while she was alive. I am grateful that the very process of working on my book brought me to a place of deeper compassion and understanding for both my parents.
WHY THIS TITLE: This is the title of one of the chapters of my book and when I finished the whole thing I realized that it would be a fitting title for the book. First of all, the fact that we were completely cut off from any other family, that I never met another relative and that my parents were secretive about their families created a kind of unmoored sense in my life. I felt untethered and as if my very small nuclear family was just deposited on earth attached to nothing. Add that to the fact that I have only a small handful of actual memories from my childhood and the result was something like This Never Happened.
WHY SOMEONE WOULD WANT TO READ IT?: Anyone who has experience with narcissism OR parental abandonment OR family secrets will find solidarity in my story.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
“Liz Scott shares the achingly real struggle to understand her childhood and her narcissistic parents in her hilarious/beautiful/wrenching memoir, This Never Happened. Raging narcissism is the foundation of her confused childhood and continues into her acquiescent adulthood; there is no escape. She works hard to excavate the truth of her life, overturning each insane interaction with her parents; looking for answers, looking for meaning. Told with an unflinching willingness to self-examine, Scott never gives herself a pass on suspect behavior. It’s no wonder Scott eventually becomes a therapist; her lifetime of ruthlessly analyzing her own life is a rich preparation for helping others. Told with raw humor, bracing humility, enough anger to light a fire, but ultimately with an abundance of love, This Never Happened is a deeply affecting and satisfying read. Brilliant!”
“A remarkable hopscotch through memory and memorabilia to understand how the past shapes one’s present. An irreverent, relatable, compulsively readable creation. ”
“Spare, elegiac, This Never Happened is a mournful and yet reassuring memoir of a family’s dissolution in the wake of a narcissistic mother and a father’s abandonment. Liz Scott writes with warmth and humor, bringing light to even the saddest darkness. This memoir is destined to be a classic. ”
“Surprising, funny and impossible to put down, Liz Scott’s memoir This Never Happened will break your heart with its calamitous wit and self-awareness. Scott’s elusive pursuit of familial truth and belonging haunts every page. A strange, unforgettable search for meaning.”
“In this unflinching memoir, Liz Scott gathers up the pieces of her family’s legacy, from the exquisite yet heartbreaking letters young Liz wrote to the father who abandoned her, to the magnificent love letters between her parents before Liz was born—sentiments unrecognizable in the mutual rage Scott later witnessed for most of her life. Love and affection, when given at all, were doled out sparingly, and never without a price. This Never Happened is a searing examination of a life lived in the shadow of an unpredictable mother whose past remained hidden even on her deathbed, and whose motives for meanness seemed impossible to pin down. But Scott does just that, and in the process of cracking the code of her mother, it is Scott who breaks open and unfolds in this beautifully honest look at what it means to have compassion, however flawed, for the people who hurt us, and for whom we can never truly know or understand.”
“Liz Scott’s journey into the deep and vast is a journey into family. Who fits where and where is that place just for her. Where do I fit? Where do I belong? Liz takes a pickaxe to her illusions. Family. The deep and vast cavern where we smithy our chunk of coal into a diamond. You will love Liz Scott’s memoir. Run out and buy it.”
AUTHOR PROFILE: Liz Scott has been a practicing psychologist for 40 years, helping clients to identify life themes and make sense of the puzzle of their lives. She has brought this focus to her writing in the last fifteen years, first as a short story writer and most recently in her memoir, This Never Happened. Originally from New York City, she currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon. You can find more information at www.lizscott.org
AUTHOR COMMENTS: The search for the truth has been a lifelong pursuit for me. It lead to a career as a psychologist where I have the privilege of helping people sort out the mysteries and puzzles of their lives. I have done my best to take an unflinching look at my family, including myself, in the hopes that others might see themselves reflected and feel some solidarity.
SAMPLE CHAPTER:
What We Had
We had woods that never stopped. We had creeks with tadpoles and garter snakes and painted turtles. We had real Indian arrowheads buried shallow in our backyards. We had freedom. We had mothers who didn’t work. We had lessons: ballet and piano and horseback riding and ice-skating and ballroom dancing and etiquette. We had money. We had fathers who came home drunk on the 7:20 train or who stayed in the city during the week. We had swimming pools and tennis courts. We had no curfews. We had Zenobia and Mammy and Beulah and Miss Fay. We had rope swings over swimming holes. We had real art on the walls and real antiques for furniture. We had mothers who took Miltown and stayed in bed all day. We had freezers packed with ice cream sandwiches and Eskimo Pies. We had no rules. We had spring vacations in the Caribbean. We had parents who had sex with our friends’ parents. We had dogs and cats and horses and fish. We had camps we were sent to on the day after school let out that lasted until the day before it started again. We had famous neighbors. We had fathers who never came home. We had fireflies in mayonnaise jars with holes punched in the lid. We had ponies at birthday parties. We had friends’ fathers who groped our small breasts. We had no chores. We had miles of twisty one-lane, stonewall-lined roads almost free of cars where we could ride our shiny bikes till dark. We had sex too early. We had cotillions. We had mountains of presents under the Christmas tree. We had perfect manners and perfect grammar. We had unlocked liquor cabinets and pantries stocked with cartons of Chesterfields. We had keys to the car before we had licenses and our own fancy cars to drive home from high school. We had Madame Alexander dolls and Ginny dolls with full wardrobes, including real fur coats. We had illegal abortions in Park Avenue offices.
We had so much.
LOCAL OUTLETS: Powell’s City of Books
WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: Amazon, Barnes and Noble Online, Powell’s online
PRICE: $20
CONTACT THE AUTHOR: esphd1@gmail.com OR www.lizscott.org