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House of Happy Endings: A Memoir

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Leslie Garis' account of growing up in a harrowingly fragile family of writers in the 50s and 60s is the most affecting book I've read for months. In their vast Amherst house, we meet her gallingly successful grandfather Howard Garis (of Uncle Wiggly fame), his toxic wife (The Bobbsey Twins), and their tireless failure of a son--Roger Garis (Leslie's father)--who aimed higher than his parents but withered in their shadows, spiraling down into addiction, insanity, and fecklessness.

The hero of the book, and the one for whom I shed the most tears, is Leslie's mother, who somehow kept this combustible trio functioning as long as she could on ever tighter budgets, while raising three children (Leslie and her two brothers), each with their own heartrending challenges. The story unfolds against a fascinating literary and theatrical backdrop peopled by (among others) Robert Frost, Tennessee Williams and (posthumously, hauntingly) Emily Dickinson.

Beautifully observed, compassionate, and filled with more cliffhangers than "normal life" usually delivers, The House of Happy Endings left me rather shattered and profoundly moved. I found myself staring at the photo of the family on the book's cover long after I'd finished reading, feebly trying to stroke the faces of the little boys, as if to comfort them.

In this frightening but unforgettable book, Garis exposes how thin the membrane between sanity and insanity is, how easy it can be to fall through to the other side. And how the strong survive.

This was a great book written by a very talented writer. In my opinion Leslie Garis was heroic to open her life story so wonderfully and reveal the components operating in a dysfunction that affects so many families today. Back in the 50's and 60's we didn't talk about mental illness and/or the substances used to self-medicate. It was just really, really well written - a can't put-down reading. Thank you Leslie for your life story.

I grew up in a home filled with children's series books such as Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins and many others (not all of them series books, thank goodness). At the time, I thought author Laura Lee Hope was not just an author's name on the cover of Bobbsey Twins books but one that represented a single author, not a series of authors working for an organization. I thought of Laura as a kindly woman who sat down and thought of a new formulaic story for children, perhaps with a light shawl around her shoulders, sun streaming through the windows of her traditional home.

Wrong! Instead, a group of various authors worked for Edward Stratemeyer to create many of those children's books. Stratemeyer was a shrewd man who hired writers to work for his syndicate, allowing him to maintain control and most of the profits.

After reading the book, House of Happy Endings, written by Leslie Garis, I had a whole new perspective on the world of peaceful families, solid values and the sugar-coated world of those children's series books, ones populated with the names of Tom Swift, Baseball Joe, Dorothy Dale and the Bobbsey Twins. Our home had a fair number of these books, although I admit I found them a bit too formulaic for my tastes. Still, I have memories of those covers and the beaming faces and idyllic scenes that graced those covers.

In the books I'd read, everything generally ended well and the children and adults went off to bed to dream happy dreams -never nightmares. I do feel compelled to warn potential readers of House of Happy Endings that if you have cherished memories of those books - as well as illusions of kindly authors spinning these lovely fantasy tales - ....you might want to avoid reading the book. But if you like wonderfully told memoirs that are both powerful and enlightening, I'd suggest you get a copy of this and sit down for a good read.

Why? Because House of Happy Endings openly examines the life of one author, Leslie Garis, and her family and how their lives were seriously twisted by trying to live a life modeled on illusions of perfection like those reflected in the books. Leslie Garis's grandfather, Howard Garis, was the creator of the famed Uncle Wiggily books. He couldn't walk down the street without children clamoring for him to tell them stories about Uncle Wiggily and he'd often do just that. He was seen as a kindly gentleman who love children and eagerly looked forward to coming up with more tales to enchant them. The truth was far darker.

Imagine being the son of the man who created Uncle Wiggily. The son of "the man who created Uncle Wiggily" was Roger Garis. Try to think about how that might impact your life. Intrigued? Then you'll want to pick up the book, House of Happy Endings, because Leslie Garis reveals exactly how intimidating it was for a budding writer (her father) to try to compete with the reputation of his own father. You'd think he'd want to avoid becoming anything but a writer but his father encouraged him to continue the family tradition even as his mother undermined him.

By now it should be clear that the Garis household was definitely not one of life imitating art, of the sunny, cheerful Bobbsey Twins, but of a family struggling desperately to hold things together in the wake of impending crisis. Leslie Garis's father, Roger Garis, had terrible mood swings, drug addictions and the ill luck to be overshadowed by his famous father. She describes his struggles, mental breakdowns and odd behavior in an open, but also loving, style. I consider this book to be one of the best I've read in quite some time.

At this point, you may be cringing and wondering why on earth anyone would ever want to pick up this book, one which tears apart the illusions anyone might hold about the beloved Bobbsey Twins and Uncle Wiggily and the authors behind them.

Here's some quick reasons you should put this on your "to read" list of books:

1. It reveals a piece of American social history, especially children's literature and book history, that is both personal and engaging. There are larger truths and insights here about what people wanted to read, the ideals they cherished and the type of books they bought for themselves and their children - especially in the 30s and 40s. Author Leslie Garis had rare access to some of the letters sent by those readers as well as the demands of the publishing company.

Reading this allows one to get a "behind the scenes" looks at children's book series authors, their readers and the way the work was written and published. As a reader and a writer, I found it impossible to put down!

2. The book is written with enough drama to be completely riveting but also a certain amount of restraint. This could easily have seemed like a "Mommy or Daddy Dearest" story but the author has the good sense to pull back from that and to simply reveal what life was like at The Dell, a family home bought with much hope and promise and one that was indeed expected to be a house of happy endings. Instead, life in that large home turned into a downward spiral and a steadily worsening nightmare. Leslie Garis was witness to it all and reconstructs the entire situation with amazing clarity.

3. There is previously unrevealed information about the inside workings of the Stratemeyer syndicate. They really held dear the illusions they created, including the fact that there was one author named Laura Lee Hope who wrote The Bobbsey Twins. Even today, many unknowing readers assume that there was a single author who wrote all those books. I really enjoyed learning the truth as well as the impact that trying to keep secrets had on the Garis family. The Stratemeyers could be cruel, demanding and vengeful!

4. The book is inspirational, although not in the way that many "inspirational" book fit that genre. It is a sideways kind of inspiration, one that can be intuited by reading the author's bio and learning that she went on to write New York Times Magazine profile of many authors, including John Fowles and Joan Didion and Georges Simenon.

Before that, however, she had her own breakdown and struggles. For all readers of House of Happy Endings, one message could well be that life can be hard but resilience can be found even when all hope truly seems lost.

5. Leslie Garis doesn't pull any punches. She describes the weaknesses of her father, grandfather, mother and grandmother in graphic detail. The family was like a turbulent cloud of dysfunction and yet there were happy moments and even touching ones. From hysterical fits to money troubles, Garis gives a first person account, first seen from the eyes of a child and then as the emerging woman she was becoming. No one was left untouched, from her brothers to Garis herself. All suffered from the family dynamics.

Perhaps most touching of all is the plaintive question that opens the book but which I find to be an excellent summary of how Leslie Garis felt so much of the time, the question she seem to return to - time and again:

"We were a nice family once, weren't we? "

This memoir shows the triumph of life over madness. Leslie Garis does a great job, and a courageous one, sharing memories of her growing up years in a household governed by a father with mental illness. It shows the pain and anguish of all involved. And, in 2007, this father would have gotten good medicine and the family life would have been totally different. It is hard to believe a family can live beyond the pain. But, they all did.

In this masterly account of growing up in an extraordinary literary household, Leslie Garis concludes that her father's life was irreparably damaged by his fruitless quest to live up to his father's authorial legacy (the Uncle Wiggily stories) and his mother's burdensome expectations (she was another author, the Bobbsey Twins).

I enjoyed the book immensely, yet it also felt to me that Ms. Garis suffers from the same fate. Not that her life has deteriorated into the blasted wasteland that her father's did, but she seems so wrapped up in her father's life (perhaps unavoidably) that her own identity has suffered.

Her account of her family life is riveting. But it is also very claustrophobic, and I was glad to arrive at the end of the book. I was feeling pretty beat up by then, so one can only imagine how she felt in her home. Although we end up knowing absolutely everything there is to know about Garis's family, we know next to nothing about the author beyond her home life. When she does mention fleeting moments in the larger world -- such as when she is voted the town's equivalent of a homecoming queen -- I was surprised by her reactions and thought they seemed out of character. But then I realized that I didn't know what would be in character for her.

I also sensed that she was trying mightily to establish her empathy for her father and grandfather, despite their failings and frailties. When she learns that her grandfather was unfaithful in his marriage, she says she is happy that he knew how to please himself. But is that really what she thought? Many times I felt she was not honestly remembering her reactions, but superimposing carefully considered conclusions of the present onto her past. Her identity seems wrapped up in this role of understanding daughter and granddaughter.

The intensity of the book might have been leavened with scenes from the author's world outside the four walls of her home. I think it would have helped the reader understand how she survived emotionally. She has led a life of great achievement, and the reader roots for her all the way. But I'm not sure we know much about her after all.

Once I started this book I HAD to finish it. It is both heartbreaking and unforgettable.

I loved this book! It details the tragedy of a family living with mental health problems as well as economic woes which resulted in some very sad childhood traumas and other social issues that were not addressed in the early and mid 1900s. I was trying to think what to say about this book because so many of the themes are depressing and therefore to say I loved the book sounds weird, but it was so well written and written with such love and basic understanding for all the members of this family that I just felt like I knew all of these people. From the opening sequence of a little girl going up and down in the dumb waiter, listening to the goings on in all parts of the huge house, I was enraptured. There is not a modicum of blame in this book even though each member of the family suffered from the behaviors of other members of the family. And in the end the author tells very briefly of her own mental health issues with no blame whatsoever for any genes she may have inherited, or any other excuse for her problems. She just had those problems and dealt with them the best she could, and went on with her life. I hope her brothers can also find some peace in their lives, and happily her mother seems to have a spate of peace at this time. I guess I have never thought about the authors of children's books, but in the end they are just people like the rest of us. Amazing. We really are just one big human family.

House of Happy Endings: A Memoir by Leslie Garis

As a young girl hiding in the dark corners and the dumbwaiter of the Dell, the newly purchased mansion in idyllic Amherst, Massachusetts, Leslie Garis listened to whispered parental exchanges with the highly attuned sense of foreboding peculiar to intutitive children. Although Roger Garis approached work on his fledgling magazine, The Pioneer, with manic purpose, his early failure to launch a most difficult enterprise signaled the grandiosity, much as the Dell itself did, that would comprise an aspect of his addictive, unstable personality. Garis' failure to graduate from a handful of colleges points to a man for whom doing what was necessary to get from point a to point b was beyond him. The rules of conventional living, e. g., working at a job he loathed, did not apply to him.
Unlike her brothers, Ms. Garis, as first-born, benefitted from parents who were financially and socially comfortable with themselves and Amherst's intellectual community. When her grandparents, Howard, the creator of the Uncle Wiggily books, and Lilian, a writer for the Bobbsey Twins series, move into the Dell, the delicate family balance tips. Financially supported by his parents, Roger Garis chose to overlook his mother's difficult and imperious behavior towards him, his wife, and his children. Lilian's unchallenged abuse, an abuse her son would later duplicate, created an environment in the Garis family where shoddy behavior was tolerated.
After Lilian dies, Howard Garis' drinking escalates along with his son's prescription pill addiction and bouts of mental illness. Destined to doom, Mabel, Roger's harried wife, fifteen years his junior, struggles to prop up this father and son team and create a semblance of family normalcy. Yet the decisions the Garis family makes increasingly revolve around Roger's demands, his next pill, his next chichi institution, his next Caribbean trip, leaving the other family members, especially Leslie's brothers, on an empty field with scant parental emotional or financial support. As the money dwindles, the choices shrink, and the magic house is sold.
An early confidante of her flailing tweed-clad father, Ms. Garis long viewed him with a tolerance and awe prompted, perhaps, by his artistic frustrations. An enterprising daughter of privilege, although now without means-overreaching, she escapes to Vassar, I'm free, I'm finally free, and flees to Paris after graduation. Wherever she is, Ms. Garis carries in her mind the patches of family chaos she has left behind in western Massachusetts. Marrying the handsome, young, successful playwright, Arthur Kopit, a man whose work Roger admires seems again an effort to please her father or a subconscious wish to perpetuate the literary spouse cycle. For someone who also had a complicated father, it was a relief to read that Leslie Garis in spite of suffering from depression created with her husband and three children (and their attendant genetic issues) a house that truly did have a happy ending. That struggle, too, could be a memoir.

This warm-hearted book describes the terrible strain of a father's mental illness on the entire family. This is a very talented writer who invites the reader to her childhood home, set in a picturesque New England town, and introduced us to her remarkable family.

A common thread runs through sincere memoirs, this thread defines which binds the Author's life and book. In this story the Author's Father dominates due to his seemingly simple choices in the navigating of his life, therefore indirectly deciding the roads his family travels. Observing this family's discipline, enabling them to make it through what others possibly would have been devastated by, made for fluffier landings in their trails of ascensions. Read this book and you should feel this Author's angst and pain, even be transported back in time, where some will feel empathy for this families traumatized legacy. This book certainly deserves a larger readership, inspite of the book's slow start, I didn't become fully absorbed, trapped until the last third of the book. Notably, the book doesn't seem to fit the the time period it was written in, well-cloistered perhaps. Last but not..., figuratively speaking or not, this book teaches profoundly how talent (magic) or lack of, builds the only wee world we have.