MY SISTER FROM THE BLACK LAGOON : A Novel of My Life [Hardcover]

Laurie Fox (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 11, 1998

"I was born into a mentally ill family. My sister was the officially crazy one, but really we were all nuts." So begins My Sister from the Black Lagoon, Laurie Fox's novel of growing up absurd. Lorna Person's tale is wrested from the shadows cast by her sister, Lonnie, whose rages command the full attention of her mother, a Rita Hayworth lookalike, and her father, a television network accountant full of Jackie Gleason bluster. Their San Fernando Valley household is off-key and out-of-kilter, a place where Lonnie sees evil in the morning toast and runs into the Burbank hills to join the animals that seem more like her kin. Imprisoned inside a cuckoo's nest of a family, Lorna faces the world armed with nothing but an unshakable faith in Art - and perhaps the healing power of show tunes. As Lorna searches for acceptance in her teen years - buoyed by Shindig! and Joni Mitchell - she must also disentangle herself from her beloved sister's wild and morbid underworld. In high school, Lorna finds her place by not fitting in, finding solace and mutual support with a troupe of hippie friends as luminous and wacky as herself. High school also ushers in the arrival of The Boy and a gift for making poems. The imagination that sustained Lorna as a girl now carries her into the theater, placing her center stage for the first time in her life, where she finally finds the room to come to terms with her sister and parents.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Lorna is good, Lonnie is bad. In the Persons family, these are the roles of the two daughters--equally troubled but unequally equipped to handle the absurdities of everyday life. Though Lonnie is the "officially crazy one" in the eyes of the world, the rest of the clan is far from normal--at least, in Lorna's eyes. Her mother is a frustrated housewife, worn down by the struggle to appease Lonnie's fits of rage and dementia, while father--exhausted by the tensions of the corporate world--has little energy left over to abide Lonnie or appreciate Lorna. Although younger than her sister, Lorna feels responsible for Lonnie's welfare, for the well-being of the entire family--a losing battle, if ever there was one.

To escape the pressures and unpleasantness of reality, Lorna relies on her imagination: She becomes a ballerina, a Broadway songstress, a Miss Universe contender. The interiors of her mind provide relief from the role she must play in her family and elsewhere: She is the good girl to everyone but herself. ("Ever since I was six and halfway aware that something about Lon didn't work right, I've been vigilant about ... counting the things I am grateful for. Or could be grateful for, if I were a good person.") The only difference between her and Lonnie, she is convinced, is that she is simply a better actress.

Lorna guides us through her real and fantasy life, from the angst of lonely adolescence to the trials of finding and losing love, and finally to the relief and reward of acceptance. Through it all, Lorna remains true to herself. And though she doesn't always think much of the person she is, she emerges from childhood a strong, passionate, and compassionate figure, realizing that--despite all the pain and guilt of growing up with a mentally ill sister, a "sister from the black lagoon"--Lonnie represents the best and worst of her own life and identity. --Leah Ball

From Publishers Weekly

A triumph of storytelling verve, dark humor and unabashed candor, Fox's autobiographical first novel (a poet, she wrote Sexy Hieroglyphics: 3,335 Do-It-Yourself Haiku) is the enthralling story of Lorna Person, daughter of a TV network accountant and a lovable 1950s mom and younger sister to Lonnie, the truly crazy child with a "frown that could launch nuclear missiles." Lonnie's mental illness is the natural disaster of the Person family, leaving every member hanging onto shreds of their selves. Or as Fox so aptly puts it, "Life with Lonnie was the only story. Until this story, which I hope to God is my own." In 23 funny, sometimes heartbreaking chapters, Fox takes Lorna (known to her sister as Oozy) from her lonely childhood in Burbank, Calif., to her roller-coaster teens in the San Fernando Valley and finally to UC-Santa Cruz, where she begins to claim her life. Many of the traumas and dramas are achingly familiar: an awkward childhood; an unwanted move; the discovery of friendship, love and sex (for this lucky girl, first love and first sex are mated); and, of course, the parents' divorce. No doubt, if that alone were Fox's material, she would have made a terrifically entertaining tale of it. But it isn't. What shadows this story is the crazy, terrorizing sister who dresses like a boy, wails like a bobcat and says, only too perceptively, "home sour home." As much as Lonnie torments her, Lorna does love her sister, trying always to protect her?from taunts and rocks and the knowledge that her brain works differently. And that is where the tension lies: How will Lonnie's Oozy ever become Lorna? The novel's subtext is television (apt for a novel partly set in Burbank), and, like TV, the narrative is episodic. A few episodes fall flat, yet big-hearted Lorna sustains this fresh and potent tale. Author tour. (Aug.) FYI: Fox worked at Warwick's Bookstore in California and helped start their reading program. She is a writer-in-residence in L.A. schools.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1ST edition (August 11, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684847450
• ISBN-13: 978-0684847450
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,983,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laurie Fox is the author of the autobiographical novel, My Sister from the Black Lagoon (Simon & Schuster; Publishers Weekly starred review; full-page New York Times Book Review), The Lost Girls (Simon & Schuster; featured in USA Today) and the "interactive" haiku poetry book, Sexy Hieroglyphics (Chronicle Books). In turn, she has published two chapbooks, Sweeping Beauty: Notes on Cinderella and I Love Walt (both from Illuminati), and her poetry has been included in several literary journals. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz in Creative Writing and Theatre, Laurie has written and performed in many theatre and performance art works. A former bookseller of both new and antiquarian books, Laurie was a longtime creative writing teacher and freelance editor. She is presently working on a new novel as well as completing the book for a musical, "anotherwhere" (a sample of the songs can be heard on MySpace.com/anotherwhere. A native of Los Angeles, Laurie currently resides in Berkeley, CA, in author Philip K. Dick's teenaged home. And yes, she does dream of electric sheep!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tender, funny, and thoroughly absorbing novel!, December 22, 1999

By 

Ericka Lutz (Oakland, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Sister from the Black Lagoon : A Novel of My Life (Paperback)

"My Sister from the Black Lagoon" absorbs and entertains from its engaging first line ("I was born into a mentally ill family. My sister was the officially crazy one, but really we were all nuts") to its almost dreamy, nostalgic end.

Laurie Fox's autobiographical novel tells the double coming-of-age story of Lorna Person (the narrator) and her deeply-disturbed, brilliant, and gender-bended sister Lonnie, ill from birth with an undiagnosed mental disorder that makes her run wild with animals, rage at "normal" people. and generally live in her own, untamed, internal universe.

Lorna and Lonnie grow up in the TV soaked and inspired environment of '50's Burbank. While the family struggles to cope with Lonnie's illness (with weekly trips to the psychiatric clinic and prescription sedatives for the parents), lonely Lorna plays at normality, escaping into the fantasy worlds of movies, theater, and music. As the '50's turn into the '60's, the Person family dissolves. Their parents divorce, Lorna discovers love and friendship, Lonnie becomes more and more removed from society. When, as a late adolescent in college, Lorna finally cracks, her salvation again comes from the theater. This time, though, not through playing another person's character, but by creating her own.

While "My Sister" is largely Lorna's story of creeping out from under her sister's overbearing shadow, it is always Lonnie's story too. Fox's voice is wry yet always compassionate and utterly respectful as each sister grows into being her own Person.

This book is an excellent choice for those interested in a tale of a family fighting terrible odds, for those fascinated by the symbiotic, twisted, loving relationship any sisterhood entails, for those intrigued by the ravages mental illness imparts on an otherwise "normal" neurotic household, for those who believe in art as salvation, or simply for those who enjoy a very good read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Shallow, disappointing, June 22, 2002

By 

Catherine Hallberg "(Kate)" (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Sister from the Black Lagoon : A Novel of My Life (Paperback)

Even though the author stated early in her book that she hoped this was *her* story, the story lacked depth about the mentally ill sister and the author's relationship with her. Lorna/Laurie's relationship with her cat seemed, at times, to be more important to her than her dear, frustrated (and frustrating) sister.

Never did we learn what Lonnie's illness is, what was being done for her, how she was educated, what her prognois was, how she acted that was violent (other than the unusual toys and the interesting pets)- Lonnie clearly lacked depth. Why mention the sister in the title if the novel was to be entirely about Lorna?

Other reviewers have suggested that Lorna/Laurie is self-centered, but that is to be expected. This is a memoir of an actor/writer, after all. The point of a memoir is to focus on one's life- and a actor is supposed to present herself.

Lorna/Laurie had a typical, freak, suburban upbringing in the 60's. The major difference is that she had a lot of stress at home, without enough support for herself, for her mother, and for her father. Even Lonnie appeared to not be well-supported by her therapists. Hopefully, people who work with the mentally ill and their families have learned over the decades to support them as they have learned with other forms of more visible illness.

A better memoir to explore the flaky family and the ensuing sister entanglement is "The Liar's Club". Truly a wonderful read.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Started out funny, but it quickly went downhill, February 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: My Sister from the Black Lagoon : A Novel of My Life (Paperback)

This book started out funny (with Lonnie's fear of toast) and quickly went down from there. Instead of being a book about her crazy sister, we ended up being fed a bit of her own personal neurosis and details of her first sexual encounter. To be honest, that's not why I bought the book, but I grudgingly read on hoping that the book would get better. It didn't.