My Sister From the Black Lagoon : A Novel of My Life

"I was born into a mentally ill family. My sister was the officially crazy one, but really we were all nuts." So begins My Sister from the Black Lagoon, Laurie Fox's incandescent novel of growing up absurd. Lorna Person's tale is wrested from the shadows cast by her sister, Lonnie, whose rages command the full attention of her parents. Their San Fernando Valley household is off-key and out of kilter, a place where Lonnie sees evil in the morning toast and runs into the Burbank hills to join the animals that seem more like her kin. Lorna, on the other hand, is an acutely sensitive girl who can't relate to Barbie. "Could Barbie feel sorrow? Could Barbie understand what it's like to be plump, lonely, Jewish?" My Sister from the Black Lagoon is a wisecracked bell jar, a heartbreaking study of sane and crazy. Laurie Fox's delightful voice is knowing yet wide-eyed, lyrical, and witty. "I was born into a mentally ill family. My sister was the officially crazy one, but really we were all nuts.". So begins My Sister from the Black Lagoon, Laurie Fox's novel of growing up absurd. Lorna Person's tale is wrested from the shadows cast by her sister, Lonnie, whose rages command the full attention of her mother, a Rita Hayworth lookalike, and her father, a television network accountant full of Jackie Gleason bluster. Their San Fernando Valley household is off-key and out-of-kilter, a place where Lonnie sees evil in the morning toast and runs into the Burbank hills to join the animals that seem more like her kin. Imprisoned inside a cuckoo's nest of a family, Lorna faces the world armed with nothing but an unshakable faith in Art - and perhaps the healing power of show tunes. As Lorna searches for acceptance in her teen years - buoyed by Shindig! and Joni Mitchell - she must also disentangle herself from her beloved sister's wild and morbid underworld. In high school, Lorna finds her place by not fitting in, finding solace and mutual support with a troupe of hippie friends as luminous and wacky as herself. High school also ushers in the arrival of The Boy and a gift for making poems. The imagination that sustained Lorna as a girl now carries her into the theater, placing her center stage for the first time in her life, where she finally finds the room to come to terms with her sister and parents. Lorna Persons is the youngest of two daughters born in the 1950s to a Southern California family. Burdened by an older sister who is afflicted with a mysterious mental illness that causes self-deprecating and other bizarre behavior, Lorna's severe longing for normalcy, combined with a sensitive nature and requisite teenage angst, leads her down a bittersweet path of anger and guilt to acceptance. Adding to the misery of Lorna's coming-of-age saga are her parents, apathetic at best, borderline neurotic at worst, both too encumbered by their own self-pity to provide more than basic nurturing, forcing Lorna to escape into fantasies of fame and its perceived adoration. Semi-autobiographical Featuring gorgeous prose, unflinching honesty, sharp wit and images that burn into the mind and heart, this story of growing up with a mentally ill sibling offers a profoundly affecting autobiographical novel written in the tradItion of the bestselling THE LIARS' CLUB by Mary Karr (PICADOR). The love of two sisters, one of them mentally ill. The sick one exhibits volatile emotions and bizarre reactions, reads horror comics and mutilates toys. The healthy one tries to make her normal to save her from an asylum, but it does not work Julia, my mother, looks like Rita Hayworth, but she is prettier and more real.