We Are All Shipwrecks

July 31, 2017
Carlisle, who teaches writing at Trinity University in San Antonio, Tex., describes her unorthodox upbringing in L.A. in this rich and complex memoir of a search for family. Her mother was murdered when she was three weeks old and she then lived with her grandfather and his second wife on a large boat in the L.A. harbor. “Where you come from is who you are,” her grandfather—a loving though volatile English pornography store owner—said to her. He raised Carlisle for most of her childhood following her mother’s murder, and he regularly withheld information from her about her parents and relatives. Her relationship with him and his much younger second wife, whom Carlisle referred to as her parents, was the defining one for her into adulthood, and it left Carlisle with many unanswered questions about her mother’s unsolved death and her own past. As a kid, she enjoyed living on her grandfather’s enormous boat, and the book describes their menagerie of animals as well as the kind, crusty neighbors she befriended. After college Carlisle began a search into her family’s history that lasted into her 30s and connected her to the LAPD’s cold-case homicide unit. Carlisle captivates the reader in this tender, warts-and-all narrative of her attempt to unravel her mother’s murder and of the man who helped to create an adventurous, if confusing, childhood for her.

July 1, 2017
Carlisle (Writing/Trinity Univ.) chronicles her quest to know the mother who died when the author was 3 weeks old.The author had always been told that her mother died in a car accident, but after meeting with a detective when she was 8, she was left pondering what had actually happened to her. Carlisle had memories of living with her grandmother, Spence, and her good friend, Dee, and when Spence died, of moving in with her grandfather and his second wife. Both groups gave her snippets of information about her mother which often contradicted each other and never satisfied the desire to understand her past. Carlisle writes about how her childhood was different than most of her schoolmates': her grandfather owned an adult video store, they lived on a boat with six cats, she had no idea who her father was, and she could find very few pictures of her mother. Her story intertwines the musings of a child who doesn't understand the complex world of adults, especially the dysfunctional adults who made up her world--the johns, the alcoholics, the men who frequented her grandfather's video store--with the adult woman on a mission to find out as much as she could about her mother. From the numerous, minute details the author includes, she was obviously loved, but she still lays bare the ugly moments, particularly of her grandfather, in her portrayals of her family. The nature of her mother's death and the compassion Carlisle feels toward her family justify the slow reveal of her family's sordid past. The book also includes a reading group guide and a conversation with the author. A turbulent childhood is accurately rendered in this gritty, raw memoir of Carlisle's family and her search for the truth about her mother's death.

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August 1, 2017
Although the initial intrigue in Carlisle's engrossing memoir is that of her mother's murder, quite possibly by the Hillside Strangler, the real story is what came after. Kelly lives with her maternal grandmother and her grandmother's friend, Dee, until she is four. After her grandmother's death, she lives with her grandfather and his second wife, Marilyn. Almost nothing is normal for Kelly. Not only is her family nontraditional, but they live on a boat in a crumbling Los Angeles harbor and own an adult video store (which Kelly discovers does not rent copies of Rambo). Kelly's British grandfather goes by Sir Richard and is cantankerous and selfish, while Marilyn copes and sacrifices to provide Kelly some of the only stability she knows. Carlisle writes from her current perspective, questioning the implications of a life marked by death from the start and exploring how the adults in her life, from Dee to her grandfather to the neighbor who takes her to swim practice every morning, shaped who she was and who she became.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)