Let's Never Talk About This Again

Starred review from March 23, 2020
In this entertaining memoir, Alterman (Tears of a Class Clown), a writer and producer for the Mortified podcast, writes of her attempt to make sense of her father’s secret pornographic writing career. While exploring the bookshelves in the family den—known affectionately as the “Duck Room” (so named for its duck-themed decor)—12-year-old Alterman makes the startling discovery that her father, Ira, is the author of such books as Games You Can Play with Your Pussy (which, much to Alterman’s surprise, is not about cats) and Bridget’s Sexual Fantasies. She keeps her discovery to herself for 25 years, until Ira, at age 64, loses his job as a development and marketing executive in Boston and informs Alterman that he is reviving his writing career and needs her help with a book inspired by her wedding, tentatively titled The Naughty Bride. What follows is a funny, tender, and compassionate narrative in which Alterman—while living and working on the West Coast and starting her own family—helps her parents navigate this new phase of Ira’s life amid his declining mental capabilities due to Alzheimer’s. It is only after her father dies that Alterman comes to terms with his pornographic side gig (“I’ll always have unanswered questions about who he really was, and why he hid it from me, and whether I’m just being way dramatic about some campy books that aren’t a big deal to anyone but me”). Entertaining, moving, and at times uncomfortable, this will especially resonate with those caring for an aging parent.