Customer Reviews

Musical Chairs

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Musical Chairs" is Jen Knox's gutsy autobiographical story. It is also the weaving together of four generations of family pain and coping into a tapestry rich in that most elusive quality - the truly human.

This is a no-holds-barred book. Knox is painfully honest about herself, her past, and her battles with anxiety, restlessness, and booze. She doesn't offer rationalizations, psychobabble, or excuses. Instead, she looks for and finds the strength that comes from facing life with honesty and acceptance.

If, at times, the reader is reminded of Camus at his best, it is because Knox too finds meaning within the helpless, repetitive pointlessness which is the human condition. And, if at times, the reader feels like the author's pain and struggle are reminiscent of Kafka, it is because "Musical Chairs" is told with an attention to detail that make every moment burn itself into consciousness.

I would recommend this book to every reader. I would particularly urge it for every young woman who feels ready to take responsibility for her own life. And, if it were in my power, I would make sure it was given to every teenaged girl who attends or should be attending AlaTeen or ALANON; for this is a book which offers much to those who would choose to learn. (Kenneth Weene, PhD, author and psychologist)

This is a gripping, well-paced and clearly written coming-of-age story, in which a young woman finds her voice, her balance, her connectedness with her grandmother--but to get to the point of self-confidence and voice, she must go through her own personal hell. The narrator was a teenage runaway who worked as a stripper for a short time. Her intelligent self-awareness during that phase of her life is inspiring, and yes, very sensual,

This book reminds me of Catcher in the Rye, though the book in hand is creative nonfiction. It's about time we had a heroine who's smart, sassy, brave, ready to deal with adversity from within her own mind and from the external world. I'm also reminded of Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle, which features another spunky articulate female narrator. Wall's book is a best-seller, and Jen Knox's book should be too.

I wish my sister had had this book when my niece began to experience a long series of troubles. No one in the convoluted health care system had much to offer. Luckily my niece was able to clean up and to survive dangerous streets. She is a painter and has landed on her feet with her visionary art.

For the narrator in Musical Chairs, words are the angels, hard-won.

This is a true story of a restless adolescent with an overwhelming desire to move and explore. In this sense, she is a great deal like her great-grandmother; another person that often felt the powerful call to go elsewhere. While life with her parents was strained and they divorced, there was no extreme hostility or abuse that led to her running away. Knox then wandered from job to job, working at everything from a stripper to cosmetology. She also was heavily engaged to the dubious mistress of alcohol, spending a great deal of time under the influence. In a family with a history of mental illness in the female line, Knox also suffers from acute panic attacks, although if this can be considered an expression of her mental illness, it is mild compared to the problems of her ancestors.
During her sojourn, Knox meets many people, some of which are helpful, others that only appear to be and some that are hostile. There are boyfriends, relationships and some good times, although her life is mostly just getting by in a world where her foundation is alcohol. Her parents are aware of what she is doing and where she is living, while they provide some aid; generally they keep their hands off her life. To some their lack of forceful intervention would appear to be parental irresponsibility, although to me it was clear that had they tried to be more controlling, Knox would have simply ran out of sight.
Knox is a good writer telling a good story, she shows a great deal of promise without reaching the high bar. If you take away the mental illness of her relatives, her story is similar to what could be told by many teenage girls, including some in my family. Rebellion against parents is a natural event and many run, but never far enough away from their parents so that they are out of sight. It is as if they keep them as a safety valve in case they manage to land in the really deep stink.

Jen Knox is an exceptionally gifted storyteller, and her memoir Musical Chairs is a captivating, emotionally charged page turner.

Soon after her parents' divorce, young Jen is riddled with teenage angst, and in desperate need to find her place in the world. Aged fifteen she leaves home and enters an adult world where some (are only too eager) to take advantage of her vulnerability. Jen grows up quick.

There is a tragic irony to Jen's story; she battles with booze which many in her family have struggled with and mental illness. I applaud Jen for facing her demons head on, and managing to restore her life while having many adversities to contend with.

I strongly believe Musical Chairs should be part of every school curriculum as the lessons in life are invaluable.

I highly recommend Jen's story as a must read for all.

This is a fascinating and inspiring debut, which sorts through the experiences and evolution thus far in the life of a remarkable woman. I often find it difficult to finish memoirs, but this one is different - the pages simply flew by. Hers is a voice that feels at once both revealing and familiar, and I can't wait to see what's next from this author!

While I was reading Jen Knox memoir, "Musical Chairs", I also happened to be reading Mackenzie Phillips's, "High on Arrival". This gave me a comparative perspective on the two books. If you haven't already read "High on Arrival", my advice would be don't bother and read "Musical Chairs" instead. Jen Knox's book is what Mackenzie Phillips's book should have been.

These books are the first ones for each author. Being a survivor of sexual abuse myself, I'm typically for any book that brings this horrific subject into the public realm. How else can such things be dealt with? Pretending that such things don't happen, or that they always happen to someone else conveniently outside our families, doesn't seem to work very well. So, I was really enthused when Phillips's book came out. I watched the Oprah interview (and one or two of the others) and ordered her book.

In my opinion, Mackenzie Phillips is still in "pretend mode". Her continual justifications of her father's actions and affirmations of her love for him really grew tiresome. At this point I can't even imagine that Phillips will be able to stay away from drugs. Let's face it, she's only been "clean" long enough to write the book (with the aid of coauthor Hilary Liftin - and even that didn't help much). Phillips last arrest for drug possession was only a little over a year ago:

[...]

Problems like Phillips has don't get fixed in a year. Her message seems to be:

1). If you're in an abusive situation, continue in it until your perpetrator dies.
2). Once that happens try to see if you can fix what's left of you, but only after you get thrown into jail for possession.
3). Continue to justify your perpetrator by saying things like; "he wasn't a monster", "he was a tortured man" (so that gives him the right to torture others?), "he was on drugs" (a "good" excuse for anything), "he was a musical genius" (as if that makes a difference?), "I had and have profound love and respect for him", etc., etc., etc.
4). Then use your celebrity status to ram these ideas down the public's throat.

I quit reading Phillips's book on page 188, after a quite lengthy paragraph of these (and more) justifications. This is why I don't think Phillips had made it very far down the road to recovery. I certainly hope that I'm wrong, I really do. I'd like to see her begin to lead a normal life, in the real world. But all this has got me wondering what it is that Mackenzie Phillips really does love.

It's a shame that books like "High on Arrival" are given so much attention, while books like "Musical Chairs" linger in the background. Maybe our society should take a hard look within itself, as each and every individual should (addict or not), to preserve sanity?

In Jen Knox's book, I can at least visualize her permanent recovery. It's very difficult for those who have suffered from addiction and post-traumatic stress syndrome to fully recover and stay that way. Does anyone who suffers trauma ever really "fully" recover? Nevertheless, we can learn to lead normal lives, and find a degree of joy. "Musical Chairs" takes us down the path of much more typical roads to addiction and recovery, that almost anyone (even celebrities) should be able to relate to. Jen Knox's ability to express herself as she goes through major events in her life, in both thought and feeling, is absolutely top notch. I found this especially true of her feelings (where Philips's seem to be permanently blocked by drugs).

Jen Knox leads us through of a very honest and frank portrayal of her past. I admire her courage to take ownership of her past actions, let alone share them with the rest of the world. I'm sure her example will be truly beneficial to anyone who may read her work. (Phillips, on the other hand, keeps speaking as if it was another person who was doing these things, not her, as if she suffers from a split personality - which may be true.)

Though many women will read this book, they are not the only ones who should. If you're a man, haven't you wondered what goes through a strip-dancer's mind, what REALLY goes through her mind and what she's feeling while performing? Then you should read this book as well. It will give you quite a surprise (unless you're already well acquainted with the psychology). Though this is only one woman's experience, I believe it to be more typical than atypical of what women in this situation think and feel.

Criticisms? Jen Knox book isn't perfect. There are some things I would like to have seen more fully fleshed out. For instance, what the meaning of her grandmother's reoccurring delusion is. However, this is a memoir, not fiction. Reality seldom tires up all those loose ends of our lives. There are a few typos in the book; I think I counted about ten. Every book has typos, and as an author myself, I know how nearly impossible it is to get rid of them all. In one place there seems to be a sentence or two missing. But none of these cosmetic things are enough to distract from the story, or to affect my rating.

Jen Knox's book, Musical Chairs, is a story of choices and consequences. The author lays out her life, like open-heart surgery. Her chest is open, revealed bloody red and pulsating. It is at once unsightly and fascinating. But there is something else in Jen's opening up to us, her honesty and refusal to make excuses. She lays there, splayed open for us to see, declaring, "Here I am."

Running was in her blood, a destined event, it would seem. Following in the footsteps of her great grandmother, Glory, who defiantly set out on her own at the same young age, and finding commonalities of mental illnesses among the women in her family, Jen must've realized her course was set out for her organically.

What I like about this book and its author, is the lack of excuses. Jen's decided to share herself with us--a hard task, indeed--and she's not going to sugar coat it or defend it; what she will do, however, is attempt to understand her choices and actions and how they fit in to shaping her identity. In the writing of Musical Chairs, a memoir blatant and unapologetic, Jen is doing just that: trying to make sense of herself within the larger family history.

Yet, for all of the similarities Jen discovered between herself and Glory, there is at least one difference: Glory ran away from family, while Jen's running brought the both of them back.

With her unique voice, the author tells the poignant, yet raw, story of her journey to adulthood, living on the streets as a runaway and her ultimate struggle to establish her own identity as a woman who truly values herself. This is one of those books that lingers long after the last page is read.

Musical Chairs is a naked view into a young woman's sometimes anguishing journey through life. Jen Knox tells her story with heartfelt honesty and gutsy determination. From page one the reader becomes immersed in the struggles of a young girl to become something better than herself. She attempts to climb new heights as she wanders through a life filled with angst. This is a memoir worth delving into for anyone interested in the highs and lows of a young girl in search of herself and the meaning of life. Knox writes with wit and wisdom as she leads the reader through a series of adventures of life. It is not always easy to follow her through this twisted maze. It is full of pain and heartbreak, as well as love and good times. Readers will come away from this story with a deeper understanding of what it is to really live a life.

Julie Achterhoff
Author of Quantum Earth and Deadly Lucidity

The book opens with Jen as a teenager who is in living in a house that's falling apart at the seams as her parents' marriage begins to crumble. She is a witness a home that is slowly divided up in quarters as both of her parents each carve a space for their own. Jen is weighted down by their silences and what is not said between them. This is juxtaposed with another side of Jen who is creating her own space and struggling to find herself as an adolescent girl and as a woman.

She learns the value of running as an athlete from her Dad and also as an escape mechanism from her Great Grandmother, one she's heard about in family legends. And so she becomes a runaway teenager living life on her terms. She camps out at her boyfriend's house and at friends `houses but doesn't cave into others whims or even to the notion of what home means, finding a safety net of one's own. That is a notion that's at first too alien and foreign and ultimately too threatening. When she does finally contact her parents it's to let them know she's safe, even though they offer for her to live with them at their respective homes. Jen says no and later when she questions her own sanity and wonders if she might have inherited her Grandma's mental illness she voluntarily checks herself into a center for troubled teens, and knows she's in the wrong place, though in some way it's the right place. Once there she finds the seed for reading and gains more humanity and a part of herself even though she'll keep on running.

Lured by the hope of fast money, and the sense of power that her own sexuality brings Jen rises, then falls, as a stripper as she attempts to escape the hard life through booze binges. She says good bye to the stripper life, rekindles relations with both parents', yet still has the urge to run. She hops from one job to the next on a path towards a college education. Along the way she settles down and wonders about again about her own sanity as her fear catches up with her in the form of panic attacks. The ironic thing is that as her life gets calmer the old fears of not being safe find her, even though she discovers a home of her own making. It is what makes this story all the more human and real. For all its gritty edges Jen has an unshakable confidence and knows that if things get bad enough she can always run. Yet it's the staying with her own fear, her panic that gives her the most courage as she welcomes in romantic love and forms a tight friendship with her Grandma, and learns that running runs deep in her family but that some things like love you can run to instead of running away.