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Small Fry: A Memoir Hardcover – September 4, 2018
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A NEW YORK TIMES AND NEW YORKER TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Beautiful, literary, and devastating.”—New York Times Book Review • “Revelatory.”—Entertainment Weekly • “A masterly Silicon Valley gothic.”—Vogue •“Mesmerizing, discomfiting reading… A book of no small literary skill.”—New Yorker • “Extraordinary… An aching, exquisitely told story.”—People • “The sleeper critical hit of the season.”—Vulture
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR NPR, AMAZON, GQ, VOGUE (UK), BUSTLE, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND INDIGO
Born on a farm and named in a field by her parents―artist Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs―Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s childhood unfolded in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley. When she was young, Lisa’s father was a mythical figure who was rarely present in her life. As she grew older, her father took an interest in her, ushering her into a new world of mansions, vacations, and private schools. His attention was thrilling, but he could also be cold, critical and unpredictable. When her relationship with her mother grew strained in high school, Lisa decided to move in with her father, hoping he’d become the parent she’d always wanted him to be. Part portrait of a complex family, part love letter to California in the seventies and eighties, Small Fry is a poignant coming-of-age story from one of our most exciting new literary voices.
Praise for Small Fry
“An intimate, richly drawn portrait… The reader of this exquisite memoir is left with a loving, forgiving remembrance and the lasting impression of a resilient, kindhearted and wise woman who is at peace with her past.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A heartbreaking memoir, beautifully rendered…It’s a love story for the father that she had, flaws and all… A wise, thoughtful, and ultimately loving portrayal of her father.”—Seattle Times
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherGrove Press
- Publication dateSeptember 4, 2018
- Dimensions6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100802128238
- ISBN-13978-0802128232
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
No wonder Brennan-Jobs is always nervous around her dad, breaking glasses, fluttering her hands: she’s lovesick, and uncertain that her love is requited. “My insides are jumping,” she writes in her high school diary after he unexpectedly seeks her out for time alone together. “When I tell him events, they come alive. When I don’t tell him, they don’t exist.”
In the end, Jobs, so rich and so famous, is just another parent who withholds what his children need to thrive. “How can it look so good but feels so bad?” Brennan-Jobs says of living in his house. Her aunt, the writer Mona Simpson, answers, “What else is money for… if not to make it look good?” This artfully constructed, self-critical memoir feels like so much more than axe-grinding: what does look good is Brennan-Jobs’s future as a writer. —Sarah Harrison Smith, Amazon Book Review
Review
A NEW YORK TIMES AND NEW YORKER TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR NPR, AMAZON, GQ, VOGUE (UK), BUSTLE, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND INDIGOA 35 UNDER 35 DEBUT AUTHORTEEN VOGUE BOOK CLUB PICK
“Entrancing... Brennan-Jobs is a deeply gifted writer… Her inner landscape is depicted in such exquisitely granular detail that it feels as if no one else could have possibly written it. Indeed, it has that defining aspect of a literary work: the stamp of a singular sensibility… Beautiful, literary, and devastating.”―New York Times Book Review
“An intimate, richly drawn portrait… Small Fry is a memoir of uncommon grace, maturity, and spare elegance… The reader of this exquisite memoir is left with a loving, forgiving remembrance and the lasting impression of a resilient, kindhearted and wise woman who is at peace with her past.”―San Francisco Chronicle
“Extraordinary… An aching, exquisitely told story of a young woman’s quest for belonging and love.”―People
“Mesmerizing, discomfiting reading…A book of no small literary skill.”―New Yorker
“This heartfelt, emotional and exceedingly well-written coming-of-age memoir is a warts-and-all portrait, laced with resilience and healing… Brennan-Jobs is an outstanding storyteller, and her empowering tale of overcoming dysfunctional family relationships with haunt readers.”―Shelf Awareness
“It’s gratifying to see [Ms. Brennan-Jobs] assert her authority as the owner of her narrative. Writing with enlightened panache and dry humor, she’s as keen a witness to the ambience of the Bay Area in the 1980’s and 1990’s…as she is to the behavior of the adults around her…Never having felt safe in any of her father’s houses, [she] has built her own house in memoir form, a repository of her love and anger and mourning…It’s alive in all the rough edges of its feelings, and it’s home.”―Wall Street Journal
“[Small Fry] is a story of a girl growing up in 1980s and ’90s California trying to fit into two very different families and not belonging in either. It’s the story of her single mother trying to keep it together and often not succeeding. It’s the story of a family that is as imperfect as every family, things complicated by wealth, fame and, in the end, illness and death."―Associated Press
“Beautifully written and psychologically acute… [Brennan-Jobs] establishes herself as a truly talented writer, whose gift for description and structure equals her hard-won tolerance of human frailty.”―The Tablet (UK)
“Revelatory… Her exquisitely written prose allows Brennan-Jobs to – painfully, complexly, heroically – reclaim her own story.”―Entertainment Weekly, “Best Books to Read in September”
“The sleeper critical hit of the season.”―Vulture
“Beautifully written… the currency of this book is love.”―The Times UK
“A masterly Silicon Valley gothic… The bohemian landscape she captures will be virtually unrecognizable to anyone who equates this slice of Northern California with Teslas and tiger moms… Of the book’s myriad achievements, the greatest might be making [this] story her own.”―Vogue
"An epic, sharp coming-of-age story from the daughter of Steve Jobs. It's rare to find a memoir from a celebrity's child in which the writing is equal to―or exceeds―the parent's reputation, but that is the case with Brennan-Jobs' debut. In a lesser writer's hands, the narrative could have devolved into literary revenge. Instead, Brennan-Jobs offers a stunningly beautiful study of parenting that just so happens to include the co-founder of Apple… An exquisitely rendered story of family, love, and identity."―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Brennan-Jobs’s narrative is tinged with awe, yearning, and disappointment… Bringing the reader into the heart of the child who admired Jobs’s genius, craved his love, and feared his unpredictability."―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Brennan-Jobs skillfully relays her past without judgement... staying true to her younger self. It is a testament to her fine writing and journalistic approach that her memoir never turns maudlin or gossipy. Rather than a celebrity biography, this is Brennan-Jobs's authentic story of growing up in two very different environments, neither of which felt quite like home.”―Booklist (starred review)
“Here is a literary coming-of-age memoir of the highest order, the story of a child trying to find her place between two radically different parents, identities, and worlds. Compassionate, wise, and filled with finely-wrought detail, Small Fry is a wonder of a book, and Lisa Brennan-Jobs is a wonder of a writer.”―Jamie Quatro
“As clear-eyed, amusing, honest, unsentimental and sad as any memoir I’ve read in years. The prose sparkles, the vision behind it is ruefully compassionate and wise. No other book or film has captured Steve Jobs as distinctly as this one has. The love between father and daughter, thwarted and baffled as it often is, comes through beautifully.”―Phillip Lopate
“A gorgeous, compelling work of art and a dazzling coming-of-age story. This is a lovely, sweetly intimate portrait, a story told through the eyes of a daughter whose father struggled with his own origins―and who almost became the father she hoped he would be.” ―Susan Cheever
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Grove Press; First Edition (September 4, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0802128238
- ISBN-13 : 978-0802128232
- Item Weight : 1.5 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #578,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,819 in Rich & Famous Biographies
- #17,029 in Memoirs (Books)
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SMALL FRY depicts a side of Steve Jobs that makes me a bit sad and, at times, disappointed. No doubt, he had issues that would have benefited from therapy. To explain away some of his behavior, I've reasoned that he may have seen himself as an agent of change: a Zen master of sorts.
My life was directly affected by Steve Jobs. My mom, then an educator and college professor, bought two Apple II pc's. In addition, she borrowed a Mcintosh computer from her college, so that at one point, we had three Apple computers in our house. (Today, the Apple computer is anointed with an elite vibe that approaches cult status; but we do not own one.)
In the early days of Apple, my mom had met Steve Jobs. She admired him, believed in the vision of a pc revolution. She convinced me to learn how to use our Apple pc, because she said that it was the future. My mom explained that this gadget would be useful to me, an educational tool I should not miss out on. Somewhat grudgingly, I learned how to use our pc's. Soon, I would use an Apple II pc to type up all my writings and my mom's papers/dissertation.
In our home, we paid attention to what Steve Jobs did and said. Back then, we had no knowledge of his personal life and eccentricities.
SMALL FRY reveals the personal side of Steve Jobs: he was complicated, flawed, not always likable, but always interesting. Ms. Brennan-Jobs tells her lifestory frankly, filled with the contradictions and vicissitudes of life with "a change agent." You get to see Steve Jobs in his most personal moments: from the circumstances of the author's birth to her father's last days. Although I finished the book a few days ago, I still wonder about the dishwasher incident. It's like a koan or a puzzle. What was he thinking?
I am so glad to observe that Ms. Brennan-Jobs vanquished, escaped to university--almost despite her father (who paid her tuition, but otherwise gave little to no help or encouragement).
Everyone who reads this book will come away with a sense of what kind of father Steve Jobs was. I won't state my own opinion here: You have to read the book. I will say, though, that Chrisann Brennan--the author's mother, who suffered and sacrificed so much--looks like a saint to me. (I may read her memoir someday.)
Having considered converting to Buddhism myself, I realize now that Steve Jobs was probably practicing the Buddhist tenet of non-attachment to people, things and results. But I think perhaps he misapplied it, for too often he seemed either uncaring or cruel.
From a Rolling Stone Magazine interview of Steve Jobs, the quote that surprises, impresses, and gives a peek into his life motivations is when he says: "The goal is not to be the richest man in the cemetery. At least, it's not my goal, anyway. . . . In the broadest context, the goal is to seek enlightenment--however you define it."
For me, one takeaway from all this personal info is that we don't need to know what Steve Jobs ate for dinner, or why he named a computer "the Lisa", or that he wore tattered jeans most of the time, or the name of his guru, or what kind of car he drove. We don't need to know; but we want to know. This kind of detail I personally find fascinating. (I also recommend the bio by Walter Isaacson.)
And the truth is that, if you like and use/used any one of the devices that Apple invented, you will have more than a passing interest in the personal anecdotes that form a segment of their inventor's life. Just be prepared for the truth to be occasionally unsettling.
Lastly, I can yet recall that on October 5, seven years ago, I wistfully googled as much information about Steve Jobs as I could. I landed on a "memorial" website, in which thousands of people worldwide had posted their condolences and sense of loss. I, too, made a brief post. Inexplicably, I felt as if I had lost a friend.
When you become interested in a historical figure and start watching and reading about them, there’s a cast of characters—their family, their friends—that you’re introduced to along the way. My first exposure to Lisa came through the 1999 film Pirates of Silicon Valley, in which the story of her relationship with her father plays prominently. By the time I had read The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman the following year, to me she was an important sidenote—his initial denial of paternity of her following her birth, a significant blemish, for an otherwise heroic figure. The deeper you go in a canon (and there is a Steve Jobs canon—at least fifteen books), the more you become interested in those peripheral characters. And somewhere along the way I became interested in Lisa’s story.
Lisa’s story is intertwined with that of her mother, Chrisann Brennan, Jobs’s high school girlfriend, first love, and financial dependent for a large portion of Lisa’s life. She wrote a memoir a few years ago, The Bite in the Apple. So, in actuality we have three books—A Regular Guy, The Bite in the Apple, and Little Fry—which overlap very significantly in the period and relationships that they capture. Each comes from a different perspective, and I think it was likely important to Lisa that she recapture her own narrative through this memoir. It’s not only a chance to correct the record, but also can provide some kind of closure.
Ostensibly this is more than a memoir about her relationship with her father. It’s a memoir about growing up with that as a backdrop, but I frankly found the first half of the book pretty slow. That’s probably because there’s less of her father in the first half, and the parts with her father were the parts that interested me the most.
Lisa has a tendency to write about events that occurred to her 30 years+ ago in great levels of detail. Levels of detail so great (exact words, imagery, and small happenings) that one has to conclude she either has a photographic memory, or is remembering things in the most dramatic way to suit her narrative. The Bite in the Apple also suffers from this flaw—overly exact ancient memories that cause the reader to question the veracity of their content. It is of course possible that both mother and daughter have incredible memories, but it’s also possible that there’s a little bit of dramatic license in their accounts.
Small Fry is emotionally powerful. The story is dramatic enough that even readers more interested in Lisa’s emotional journey than Steve Jobs will get something out of it. Ultimately, as most memoirs by definition tend to be, it’s also one-sided. The low points with her father seem awful, and the high points seem agreeable and fascinating but dulled. Mona Simpson and Laurene Powell Jobs (Steve Jobs’s widow) have put out a statement questioning Lisa’s harsh treatment of her father. I think, in wanting to recapture her narrative, Lisa did have something of an agenda in writing this book, even if she’s not willing to admit it to herself in its pages. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not a good book, that doesn’t take you on a meaningful emotional journey, and further develop your understanding of Steve Jobs.
Top reviews from other countries
Despite all Lisa pulled through - an inner strength she inherited from her father no doubt.
Thank you for an impressive portrait of humanity.
Once again, we see that Steve Jobs acted at times like a dirt-bag toward his family. He was a genius when it came to Apple and making money but he was quite the dummy in terms of being a good human being. But her love for her father ultimately shines through. Lucky for him.
This is not a bad book, it is rather a good book with some flaws. Depending on the reader, those flaws could be significant or not.
I have loved the fact that we could glimpse at Steve Jobs from a new perspective. And it’s shocking to see that we cannot say to have grasped most of his personality, e.g., the reason for his reactions, his frequent meanness, for example. All one can do is try and guess, even after this book.
I am not an emotional reader, hardly I feel so moved to tears. However, I could connect to the author's feelings and I could understand her suffering. Being not a nice story, but quite a sad one, I read through the pages with a strong feeling of sadness.
The best aspect of this book is the level of detail of the memories. Colors, perfumes, noises, figures, movements: it’s a wonderfully detailed account of the author’s youth. And here come the first doubt about the content of the book: how is it possible to remember all that stuff about something that happened in the 80s? Even though some memories might be detailed to astounding levels, here we are offered a staggering number of events: words that were said, the way they were said, when, where and to whom. To me it appears too much.
The way the book is organized is a little bit disappointing, too. The book is split in few sections with a title, but no title is given to each chapter. This way of sorting did not meet my expectations, since, lacking a title, the chapter looses “identity”. The reader is not helped through the reading.
Overall, I recommend this reading, as there are some lessons to be learned about the importance of being a parent and how difficult it is. Steve was a man and was not flawless. Perhaps he really regretted his actions towards Lisa when he was living his last weeks. He surely had lots of time to think about it. I have decided to believe him - the way he insisted in apologizing to his daughter are indicative of a profound remorse. To me, personally, any person that recognizes his mistakes deserves a second chance.