Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints [Paperback]

Simon Doonan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 9, 2007

A wickedly funny memoir with echoes of David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, Beautiful People (originally published in hardcover as Nasty) is now a BBC comedy hit series from the producer of Ab Fab and The Office.

Proclaimed "the most brilliant, brash thing in type" by Liz Smith, Simon Doonan's saucy prose has established him as an emerging star among literary humorists. In this break-through memoir, reminiscent of both Sedaris and Burroughs, he revisits the landscape of his youth, and displays the irresistible charm that earned him his dedicated audience.

Long before he became a celebrity in his own right--as the author of best-selling books, as the style arbiter of VH1 and America's Top Model, and the marketing genius behind Barney's New York--Simon Doonan was a "scabby knee'd troll" in Reading, England. In Beautiful People, Doonan returns to the working-class neighborhood of his youth, and chronicles the misadventures of the Doonan clan in all their wacky glory. Readers meet his mother Betty, whose gravity-defying, peroxide hairdo signified her natural glamour; his father Terry, an amateur vintner who turned parsnips into the legendary Chateau Doonan; his grandfather D.C., a hard-drinking betting man who plotted to win his fortune by turning Simon into a jockey; and his demented grandma Narg and schizophrenic Uncle Ken, both of whom lived upstairs.

Fearing he would fall victim to the insanity that runs in his family, or, worse, the banality of suburban life, Doonan decamps with his flamboyant best-friend Biddie to London, where they hope to find the Beautiful People, that elusive clan who luxuriate on floor pillows and amuse each other with bon mots. Throughout the memoir--in essays about family holidays, the tart who lived next door, his first job--Doonan continues his bumbling pursuit of the fabulous life, only to learn, in the end, that perhaps the Beautiful People were the ones he left behind.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Nastiness is rich. Nastiness is fun." And in this colorful memoir, nasty is also quite enjoyable. Doonan (Wacky Chicks), creative director of Barney's New York, was raised in the industrial wasteland of 1950s and '60s Reading, England. He craved glamour and excitement; what he had instead were two cheeky working-class parents: the fabulous Betty, who sported peroxide-yellow hair and spike heels; and Terry, who embraced amateur wine-making with near-religious fervor. After all, in an "extended family of assorted lodgers and mentally ill relatives," alcohol helped. "It was all quite nasty," Doonan explains, so he and his drag performer friend Biddie headed to London in search of the Beautiful People. Instead, they found crazy characters and lowly prostitutes, people Doonan recalls with unabashed glee. Armed with a relentless joie de vivre, Doonan takes readers on a breezy joyride through his life, focusing less on his career trajectory than on his kooky formative years. Humor is his ultimate weapon, and whether Doonan's in Los Angeles getting arrested in Vivienne Westwood plaid bondage trousers or coping with a gay-bashing policeman in Blackpool, he keeps his comic cool. This endearing book pays tribute to a madcap childhood and the power of familial love. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The author of the hilariously fey Wacky Chicks (2003) fields another winner, recounting his pre-celebrity life among a nest of relatives who were unconventional at best, dubiously linked to sanity at worst. This eccentric British household included unorthodox, homemade wines (concocted from potato peelings and parsnips); a mother with towering, peroxided hair and a tendency to overimbibe those vintages; a butch sister self-denominated Jim; and Narg, a certifiable nutcase granny. Young Simon yearns for life away from the Midlands, in London among the beautiful people. After time there with good friend Biddie--during which he endures poverty; banging, gurgling plumbing; and an earsplitting prostitute neighbor--and years at university, struggling to develop a gay identity, Simon repairs to America at 27, only to be arrested by Tom-of-Finland-ish police while wearing "plaid bondage trousers." Not to worry; he becomes a literary wit and raconteur whose latest will draw and amuse many. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (November 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416586342
• ISBN-13: 978-1416586340
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #744,246 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 Hilarous!, July 31, 2005

By 

Regular Guy Reader (New York NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints (Hardcover)

This book is hilarious!!! It literally had me laughing out loud. It's one of the funniest books I've ever read. I highly recommend it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and surprisingly inspiring, July 11, 2005

By 

bookie (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints (Hardcover)

This book is incredibly funny--the kind that makes you laugh out loud. (Some lines were so great, I had to read them out loud to my husband). I think it is Doonan's funniest. What's really surprising about this book, however, is how touching and inspiring it is. Without a false note, Doonan's hilarious memoir is also a loving portrait of his strong, brave, (and yes, poor and crazy) family. In the end, the story is incredibly inspiring. Doonan is one of the most creative minds working in fashion and design today and this is the story of how he got there in spite of many odds against him. It is a fascinating and very freeing portrait of creativity.

29 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More Gay Than Nasty, June 10, 2005

By 

Aspry Jones (East Coast) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints (Hardcover)

When I fell upon my very first comedic memoir, "Naked" by David Sedaris, I thought it was very funny. He wrote his essays with a mock sarcasm and an intelligent enough wit that his being homosexual was always an afterthought. He puts his story first, above all else, and never seems like he's trying to be funny. When you do something well and make it look easy, that's talent. Now I know why so many readers love to compare Sedaris with all the other resident gay memoir writers. Because he's top tier. He's the best thing going.

Several rungs down is Simon Doonan, author of "Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints." Doonan bills it as a sort of indictment of strange upbringing by even stranger guardians. Well, it's not about that at all. He lightly...so lightly touches on his insane grandmother, lobotomized uncle, devil-may-care alcoholic parents and various family friends that come into and out of his life. In truth, the subtitle to his novel takes the backseat in lieu of the real deal: numerous celebrations, anecdotes, misgivings and stories about being gay. Every single story is basically about gay Doonan who does this and that, as long as we understand that he's always playing for the "other team." Really, it's like a funny, gay porno without the sex.

Wait, did I say funny? Heck yeah, it's funny. A great deal of his more humorous tales just wouldn't fly without all the prissy overtones, so sometimes I understand where he's coming from. When he gets arrested for drunk driving, the best parts involve jokes about his hilarious drag outfit. And the gut-busting chapter where he compares his "nelly" self to his manly, tough-as-nails grandfather is pricelessly appropriate to his "theme." Still and all, a good 60% of these pages don't have to be, "By the way, I'm a homosexual and I just happened to fracture my aunt's skull one day! And I'm gay, too!" You get the gist.

Funny or not, I'm not a fan of his style of writing either. He will introduce new ideas and scenarios right in the middle of his story, and sometimes won't even return to the main point before the chapter ends. I kept feeling like his chapters should have been more compact, tighter. Let's see if I can make it clearer...

Imagine reading a story about an ant. And because ants like breadcrumbs, you end up getting a story within a story about how bread is made. And then a man makes a sandwich. The end. And the end won't always be in English either. Let's not forget the constant phrases in French, a la "Lolita." I always found this practice to be very pretentious. To all you writers out there, let's just write our books in one language okay? Just in case the whole country was kidding about being bilingual.

Doonan, (did I mention that he's gay?) has no interest whatsoever in topping off his essays with any sort of satisfaction. You're laughing about a really funny situation he'd gotten himself into and then, nothing. Half the time, there is no great resolution, just a boring exit. It just doesn't do justice to the scenario if you don't give it a nightcap with a kick. Seal the deal! Would "Vacation" had been funny at the end if Chevy Chase and his family finally made it to Wallyworld, had a great, problem-free time and just went home? No. If Doonan wrote all the endings, Keyser Soze would've kept limping, Babe would have lost the sheephearding contest and Darth Vader would never have had any kids.

Actually, I wouldn't put that past Sedaris either. But he'd at least have made the ending funny.