SMARTASS

Smith presents a memoir of coming of age in a struggling Arizona family.

The author was born in Texas in the 1950s, and as she tells of growing up with her older sister, Charlotte, readers come to know her as a rambunctious, fire-spirited child in a spirited family unit. Her father worked as a priest, while her mother kept their home afloat as a homemaker, despite limited means and frequent relocations. In Tucson, Arizona, her mother’s ongoing illness, sparked by a bout of measles, and her father’s chronic pain contributed to increasing tensions that culminated in her mother temporarily entering a psychiatric institution. Things temporarily improved when the tween author’s younger sister, Melanie, was born, but two years later, the family suffered another blow when Smith’s father lost his job, and her parents’ fights grew violent. Smith’s father left their home, and she faced the burden of responsibility to help support the family. Through all this, the author discovered a love of ballet and decided that she wanted to be a professional dancer; in 1974, she moved to London with her mother and younger sister to pursue that dream. After moving back to the United States, Smith sporadically studied under a teacher named Michele, and Smith contends with romantic love, her sexual identity, drug abuse, and other concerns of adulthood. Over the course of this memoir, Smith presents a story that’s full of the twists, turns, and contentious relationships that make up an active life: ”She’s fucked me up beyond belief,” she says of Michele at one point, “and I love her dearly.” The author’s mother is an especially vivid figure, and Smith’s personable prose effectively brings her to life on the page. However, there are points at which the present-tense, summary-heavy style limits potential opportunities for reflection. The closing focus on Smith’s career also sees previously vital people in her life—her sisters, especially—fall by the wayside. All that said, readers are sure to find this book to be an engaging and earnest read, and a planned sequel is yet to come.

A compelling whistle-stop tour through a life lived to the fullest.