Synopses & Reviews
Alice Carri re grew up in a converted factory in Greenwich Village in the 1990s, an extravagant home based on the hyper-aestheticized vision of her artist mother, Jennifer Bartlett--with two studios, an indoor swimming pool, a rooftop garden with a koi pond, and multiple, cavernous rooms through which a steady stream of visitors flowed. Alice's iconoclastic European father was a fleeting, atmospheric disturbance.
Alice grows up as a child living in an adult's world, with little-to-no boundaries or supervision. As she enters adolescence, a dissociative disorder erases her identity, and overzealous doctors medicate her further into madness. In the absence of self, she inhabits various roles: as a patient in expensive psychiatric hospitals, the ingenue in destructive encounters with older men, a provocateur who weaponizes intellectual dazzle and outrageous candor--until a medication-induced psychosis brings these personas crashing down. Finally, a soulful connection with a generous and sensitive musician allows her to free herself from the pathologies that defined her and recognize her true self. With gallows humor and brutal honesty, Carri re has written a unique and mesmerizing narrative of emergence and, at last, cure.
Review
“Remarkable . . . A timeless tale of surviving emotional neglect and mental illness; but it is also the story of a singular household filled with complex and exceptional artists, and the author’s experience of inheriting their prodigious legacy. . . . Raw, filled with sorrow, dark humor and sharp observation.”—New York Times Book Review
“An intense but finely written book in the manner of classic coming-of-age memoirs like The Bell Jar.”—Vogue
“Extraordinary.”—Sarah Jessica Parker
“The writing is pure elegance.”—Lisa Taddeo
“Mind-blowing!”—Lena Dunham
About the Author
Alice Carrière is a graduate of Columbia University. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, and Oprah Daily. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and Amagansett, New York. Everything/Nothing/Someone is her first book.