Even Dogs go Home to Die: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Linda St. John (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 2001

A celebrated "outsider" artist, Linda St. John has written one of the most original, moving, funny, heartbreaking, and breathtaking memoirs of recent years. The narrative force of her voice is pitch perfect; at once precise and haunting.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A successful "outsider artist" and co-owner of the downtown New York clothing store D.L. Cerney, St. John tells a harrowing and surprising tale of alcoholic, mean-spirited parents and their angry, damaged children. Inspired by her father's brain cancer diagnosis and fueled by understandable rage, these snapshot-like vignettes depict moments of bravery, strength of spirit and survival in the face of hunger, poverty and physical and psychological abuse. Unfortunately, St. John soft-pedals her unsentimental storytelling and the extremity of her tale by assigning each vignette a cutesy title ("Daddy Didn't Need No Savin'") and writing in twangy dialect. In this book, people are forever drinkin', howlin' and beatin' on one another, yet such stylistic quirks are distracting rather than evocative. Readers who can overlook them, however, will be rewarded. While it initially seems like an unrelenting litany of bleakness, this book, like the family in it, is not as it appears. For example, like the father in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, St. John's father drinks away most of his meager wages, keeping his family nearly destitute. But halfway through the memoir, her father parts company with McCourt's altogether by getting a Ph.D. in molecular biology. As an adult, after a teen pregnancy and an abusive marriage, Linda earns a doctorate in jurisprudence. Other family members also create lives for themselves that seem wholly incongruous with the world that has shaped them. In the end, St. John delivers an admirable, strange and powerful tale. (Aug.)Forecast: Though her voice is neither as sharp nor as writerly as Dorothy Allison's or Mary Karr's, St. John maintains a stance in this memoir as well as in her art that is peculiar and fascinating yet never quite mainstream. Expect solid, but not stellar, sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

St. John offers a stark memoir of growing up in an impoverished, abusive family. Each chapter offers a vignette of an intensely shattering experience: a brother beaten so badly by his drunken father that he does not get out of bed for three days; the three children's constant fear of their father, which supersedes the pain of even serious accidents; and the complete inability of their Hungarian immigrant mother to provide the essence of a home life for this southern Illinois family. St. John begins her story as an adult taking her father in for surgery for a brain tumor and then intermingles childhood and more recent events. Though the interactions among these children as adults, both with one another and with their parents, recall their shared history of abuse, it is a remarkable statement that these family members continue to "go home." Remarkable as well is the author's journey from her hard-edged beginnings to life as a successful artist and businesswoman. This strong, well-crafted memoir is recommended for public libraries and academic libraries with writing programs. Sue Samson, Univ. of Montana Libs., Missoula
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (July 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060186313
• ISBN-13: 978-0060186319
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,151,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Of Beatings and Beauty, November 11, 2001

By 

Laurie Seeman (West Nyack, New York United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Even Dogs go Home to Die: A Memoir (Hardcover)

The author has taken an artful look at her painful family
background in a way that is amazing. The sincerity and poignant detailing suggest that the author has not borrowed trouble to write about, but does in fact know it very intimately, and has used the power of creativity to rise above and even flourish.
No one can read this book and not be inspired to look with more colorful curiosity at any trouble in their life.
All people in Alcohol and abuse programs would take heart from reading this. This book suggests tools for taking a liberating apprach to life. A beautiful book of love and understanding.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good readin' Bad spellin', September 22, 2001

By 

D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Even Dogs go Home to Die: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Memoirs of a terrible childhood marred by poverty, alcoholism and abuse in Southern Illinois. Later on the abused children look after their dying father, a WWII veteran with a PhD, and seek his love. These terrible childhoods always make good stories when told by their survivors. The worse the childhood the better the story because we know that the writer survived to become a person who could write a book. It's always a question as to how much is true (I've heard that Frank McCourt's mother was a New York secretary) but this one could stand on its own as fiction. We're given a lot of jacket biography, and even a cover designed by the author, that form an intrinsic part of the story. I share the other reviewers' irritation with the apostrophes on the gerunds but I guess them white trash aint gonna mind that none.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars sharp voice, great story teller, December 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Even Dogs go Home to Die: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Linda St. John is a wonderful talent and tells her remarkable story of surviving a stark upbringing with wit and insight in the package of a really good read. The story moves along. Her characters are tremendously vivid and orginal.