Michelle Dsouza
Paulette Vargas has lived a life that justifies a memoir several times over. A closeted father whose behavior put his children in danger. A mother trapped in an arrangement she couldn't leave. Family secrets spanning generations. A nervous breakdown at 64 and a hard-won peace on the other side. The raw material here is genuinely dramatic, and when Vargas trusts it, the book delivers.
The moments that stop you are the ones where she doesn't reach for effect. She finds her father in the garage, engine running, understands exactly what she's seeing, and walks her little sister to school. No adult called. No breakdown of her own. Just school. That single action tells you more about what her childhood had done to her than any amount of direct explanation could. She had already learned that crisis was just Tuesday.
The briefcase scene lands the same way. A mother bringing two young girls to hand cash to strangers in New York, possibly connected to gambling debts. The detail that Vargas knew better than to ask "safe from what?" out loud. A child who has already internalized that asking questions is dangerous doesn't announce that understanding. She just doesn't ask. Vargas doesn't announce it either. She just lets the detail sit there and do its work.
The nursing home confrontation with her father is handled with unusual honesty. His response is a weak apology and something about finding religion. She admits she never expected genuine remorse. She just needed to say it out loud. Most memoirs need the confrontation to mean more than it does. She lets it be small and insufficient, which is almost certainly how it actually felt, and that restraint is the book at its best.
The throughline across all of it is the same: a child who learned very early that no one was coming, and who kept moving anyway. That's the real subject of the book. When Vargas finds it, the writing earns its place.
Where it struggles is structure. The genealogy chapters go deep into Swedish immigration records and family trees that don't pay off emotionally. Readers who came for the dysfunction described in the opening pages have to wait through a lot of historical scaffolding before the book finds its footing again. The ending feels compressed compared to the childhood sections. The breakdown, which should be the emotional climax, gets fewer pages than the Playboy Bunny job. That imbalance matters. And some of the biggest unresolved threads, particularly the estrangement from Nicole, are acknowledged and then set aside. That's her right. But the reader notices the gap.
The prose is clear and direct, which suits the subject. This isn't a literary memoir reaching for gorgeous sentences. It's someone telling you what happened, and that straightforwardness mostly works in its favor.
At 60 pages, it reads like an early draft of a stronger book. The life story more than justifies a memoir. The structure needs another editorial pass to match the emotional weight of the opening to what the rest delivers.
I received this ebook directly from the author in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.
Paulette Vargas has lived a life that justifies a memoir several times over. A closeted father whose behavior put his children in danger. A mother trapped in an arrangement she couldn't leave. Family secrets spanning generations. A nervous breakdown at 64 and a hard-won peace on the other side. The raw material here is genuinely dramatic, and when Vargas trusts it, the book delivers.
The moments that stop you are the ones where she doesn't reach for effect. She finds her father in the garage, engine running, understands exactly what she's seeing, and walks her little sister to school. No adult called. No breakdown of her own. Just school. That single action tells you more about what her childhood had done to her than any amount of direct explanation could. She had already learned that crisis was just Tuesday.
The briefcase scene lands the same way. A mother bringing two young girls to hand cash to strangers in New York, possibly connected to gambling debts. The detail that Vargas knew better than to ask "safe from what?" out loud. A child who has already internalized that asking questions is dangerous doesn't announce that understanding. She just doesn't ask. Vargas doesn't announce it either. She just lets the detail sit there and do its work.
The nursing home confrontation with her father is handled with unusual honesty. His response is a weak apology and something about finding religion. She admits she never expected genuine remorse. She just needed to say it out loud. Most memoirs need the confrontation to mean more than it does. She lets it be small and insufficient, which is almost certainly how it actually felt, and that restraint is the book at its best.
The throughline across all of it is the same: a child who learned very early that no one was coming, and who kept moving anyway. That's the real subject of the book. When Vargas finds it, the writing earns its place.
Where it struggles is structure. The genealogy chapters go deep into Swedish immigration records and family trees that don't pay off emotionally. Readers who came for the dysfunction described in the opening pages have to wait through a lot of historical scaffolding before the book finds its footing again. The ending feels compressed compared to the childhood sections. The breakdown, which should be the emotional climax, gets fewer pages than the Playboy Bunny job. That imbalance matters. And some of the biggest unresolved threads, particularly the estrangement from Nicole, are acknowledged and then set aside. That's her right. But the reader notices the gap.
The prose is clear and direct, which suits the subject. This isn't a literary memoir reaching for gorgeous sentences. It's someone telling you what happened, and that straightforwardness mostly works in its favor.
At 60 pages, it reads like an early draft of a stronger book. The life story more than justifies a memoir. The structure needs another editorial pass to match the emotional weight of the opening to what the rest delivers.
I received this ebook directly from the author in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.