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The Sky Isn't Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life

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"The Sky Isn't Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life" is a particularly apt title. Felicia Sullivan uses scenes from her childhood mixed together with chapters that follow her adult life through her addiction and into her recovery. In doing so, the book gains depth, as we know some of the "why" behind Felicia's troubles and addiction. We also see her incredible honesty as she bares her life and soul to the readers, displaying to the world her own wrongs and embarrassing times, which many people would bury. Felicia gives us a window into her world, and then pulls us through the window as we are caught between the memories and her current life.

Felicia worked hard to separate herself from her mother (at the time the book was written, she hadn't been in contact for in 11 years), and at first I couldn't grasp why she became an addict. My thoughts are mirrored in the discussions between Felicia and her friends as she is struggling with her own addictions. Felicia is determined not to become like her mother, but the cocaine calls to her:

"you wonder how it is you got to this point. Because you told yourself in your bathroom that first time in December ... with two rolled bills and neatly cut lines that you'd never be an addict like your mother because you survived the war that was her, because you convinced yourself you were stronger than she was. And then, there go the lines."

Felicia follows this quote a page later with a description of her feelings about cocaine. First, she describes it for her friend, and then she completes the description for the reader:

"'It's like Broadway up my nose,' I say.
What I fail to tell Emily is how many times I've tried it since. And although I savored my first glass of red wine and the many that followed, cocaine is different. I like -- no, I love cocaine. I tolerate the nausea, the constant swallowing, the teeth grinding -- anything for that rush when the world seems simple, beautiful, and large enough to fit me in."

When she is on cocaine, Felicia is able to escape "the awkward, stammering girl who never feels smart enough, white enough, pretty enough." After struggling to fit in as a child, first alcohol and then cocaine give her the confidence to change her self-image. The change between shy, bullied child and self-confident writer and executive is so well written and well examed that the reader can truly grasp the impact addiction can have. If you are suddenly feeling a sense of self-worth, how do you give that up?

Felicia bares her soul, giving us a good long look at her life. She chronicles her own fight with addiction and mixes in childhood memories. The Sky Isn't Visible from Here is not an easy read by any means - Felicia's childhood experiences were not like those of the children of addicts I knew, well-fed and sheltered in the suburbs. These are vignettes of a year eating only potatoes, of shielding her eyes so she wouldn't see cockroaches scurrying in the floor in front of her, of seeing her friend's mother unconscious for 36 hours, and of taking her mother to the Emergency Room over and over. I have never read a book that pulled me so far into the real world of addiction; Felicia uses such intense detail when recounting the horrors she survived that I feel as if I was walking in her shoes beside her.

While Felicia has cut off contact with her mother, The Sky Isn't Visible from Here isn't a psychobabble "blame the mother for everything" book. It's an intense look into the dark world of addiction. Readers will walk away from this book with a much deeper understanding of what it is like to be caught in the life of an addict, or caught in an addiction. I highly recommend The Sky Isn't Visible from Here, to everyone, but especially for anyone who knows addicts or those recovering from addiction.

Once in a while I read a book that brings me to my figurative knees. This is one of those books. Felicia writes of growing up in the shadow of a fiercely protective (at times), careless (at other times), seductive, larger-than life, drug-addicted mother who disappeared from her life when Felicia graduated from college. Amazingly, she survived the dangerous situations in which her mother placed her, but not unscathed. Like the generational cycles that occur in many families, Felicia found herself battling the same alcohol and cocaine addictions her mother had. Only, Felicia's story, her life, is much, much different.

"You accepted these things as fact: Normal people shot heroin in their arms, in the spaces between their toes, in their neck. This was normal. This was normal. You kept repeating that to yourself as you played house with Big Michelle, the blond-haired plastic doll with the blue eyes that fell out, the doll that towered over you. When the meth addicts dropped by, raking their arms because of the itch, you colored in the lines of your coloring books with crayons that has exotic names like honeydew and cobalt."

and then later:

"Here on your desk is the stack of business cards that read Felicia C. Sullivan, Project Manager. This is 2001 and you work in a restaurant at a venture capital-backed dot-com. The cards' presence somehow comforts you. Why can't you stop shaking? You know logically that your body is here, but you can't feel it--your lips are numb, limbs slack, toes smothered in these crocodile shoes. And when you talk about milestones, forecasts, and budgets, you get your first nosebleed. Your boss winces and hands you his clean napkin and says, wipe here, wipe there."

But Felicia emerges the woman she was meant to be, the woman she always was: a strong, honest, vibrant, beautiful soul, and sober. I can't help thinking that Gus, "the man who is not my father but whom over the last fifteen years I've come to call my father," helped to save her life.

Beautifully written, with unflinching honesty, "The Sky Isn't Visible From Here" is a work of the highest art. A brave story, it underscores how a life can be devastating and hopeful in equal measures. Though it brought me to tears in several places, they were tears of admiration, admiration for the fine, strong spirit of the woman who wrote it.

I didn't hate the book and it was interesting enough that I was curious how it would end. However, I felt like her writing style was all over the place. Some chapters are about dreams. Some are written in the third person. Some in first person. One chapter I didn't even know what she was talking about. It didn't flow that well and I felt like she was trying too hard. The story itself was soso. I've read better.

I wish I could say this book is one of those Happy Ever After Ones, and it is--sorta--but instead it is more of a I Can't Get Over That Felicia Survived This Books. And by It I mean a childhood wrought with hardship, little money, a mother obsessed with drugs, alcohol, herself, and men that were no good. And an adulthood that managed to get her "out" of one lifestyle and into another one. One that was full of more money but just as much alcohol and unfortunately just as much cocaine. Only good point, Felicia got out of it. She found a way to push herself past her mother and let go.

THE SKY ISN'T VISIBLE FROM HERE is wrought with childhood stories of the haunting kind. For me, an ordinary girl from the Midwest with a "normal" mom, it is almost unfathomable that a child could grow up and out of this environment. I'm not that naive to know that it doesn't happen though. I'm just again happy my life was pretty normal.

The most touching portion of the whole book is Felicia's love for her mother. Still. Even though she hasn't heard from her since the night of her college graduation and the fact that she has indeed let her go. Forever. In fact, the entire book revolves around how she is trying to "shed" this love. Her mother haunts her dreams, her decisions, and even her adulthood. That is, until she finally (finally) decides to let go. Let her mother be who she is, without trying to hide it from the rest of the world. And, by doing that, be who she is without her mother. It's breath-taking and honest. A path not many of us would want to take--breaking ties with a parent. And standing firm on it. But it's one Felicia took full heartedly.

The book is honest, open, and earth-shatteringly real. She told the world about the worst moments of her life (and likely the most embarrassing). But yet when I read the book, I wasn't thinking it was embarrassing for Felicia, it was for her mother. She had a good thing going for her--a really good thing--and look at where "Lisa" is now?

I picked this book up and only put it down when I couldn't stay awake any longer and immediately picked it up again the next morning and read until it was done. "The Sky" is completely riveting. So many ex-addict memoirs are whiny and self-pitying--Sullivan's has none of that. And if anyone's earned the right to throw themselves a pity party, it's her!

This isn't a feel-good read, but you will put it down feeling like a better person for having read it, if that makes any sense. Revealing such personal trauma isn't an easy thing to do well, and Felicia does it beautifully.

a poignant and stirring account of a woman's highly interesting life. The story is imbued with complex psychological dramas and philosophical musings that offer much to the generation of people who grew up in the eighties and nineties. She maintains a sense of humor and literary creativity throughout the book. I was intrigued, disturbed, humored and enlightened by this unique and intelligent book of discovery.

I look forward to checking out the other works by this talented author.

Every so often, I find myself lost in a book that makes the outside world stop. I keep turning pages instead of answering the phone, starting dinner, turning out the light to go to sleep. This is one of those books.

Memoir often gets a bad name. Especially memoir that deals with addiction. But Sullivan's The Sky Isn't Visible Here launches well above the hackneyed cliches, because Sullivan's focus is on the writing, not herself. In clear and often raw prose, the author unveils her damaged mother, the dark corners of Brooklyn and Long Island where their struggle to survive played out, and the family traits that haunt Sullivan even as she struggles to reshape her identity and rebuild her own life after wresting it out of her mother's hands.

There is no attempt to shock, or aggrandize, or whine. Instead, as in the best personal nonfiction writing, Sullivan elevates her story through a careful attention to character, landscape, and craft, while remaining intensely invested in her narrative. And ultimately, we watch as Sullivan takes a knife to her own heart, cutting deeper and closer with each chapter, until she realizes that what she is trying to cut away is the very thing that will save her.
Read this book. You won't forget it.

--Kelly McMasters, co-director of the KGB Nonfiction Reading Series in NYC (kgbbar.com)

NEVER. . .have I had a reading experience like this one.

Completely unprepared for this, Sullivan's book took me by surprise. One does not expect a memoir be thrilling, terrifying, cliff-hanging -- I mean the way Tom Clancy's CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER is.

Reading THE SKY ISN'T VISIBLE FROM HERE is like riding on a runaway train. The journey begins:


"In the spring of 1997, a few weeks before my college graduation my mother disappeared. Over the years, I had grown used to her leaving: a four-day cocaine binge; a wedding at City Hall to which I was not invited; the months she locked herself behind her bedroom door and emerged only to buy cigarettes. I'd spent the greater part of my life feeling abandoned by my mother. Yet she'd always return -- blazing into the kitchen to cook up a holiday feast for ten. . .back from her drug dealer on Brooklyn's Ninth Avenue.

"On the morning of my graduation, though, dressed in a black gown, I walked up the promenade to receive my diploma. . . . My mother's face didn't appear among the proud, applauding parents. I knew then that I'd never see her again. . . ."


The train speeds up. And now the sudden horror when you realize the train is out of control, zinging faster down the rails.

In the railroad car you're riding in, there is, figuratively, a camera. Sullivan eases you behind the camera, which records every single thing -- now and in the past. The camera is outfitted with x-ray vision into Sullivan's heart and soul, as the train plunges down the track. . . .


"Turning to Ursula, I hesitated. 'We're taking a bath. . .together?'

'So what?'

Inside the cramped bathroom, steam ribboned, clouding the mirrors and windows. Ursula's mother was dousing the water with blue crystals, humming as she poured.

Ursula removed her socks, unbuckled her belt, and slid her jeans to the floor. . . .

'I don't think my mother would like this,' I said, uneasy."


We are led into delicatessens and diners, where Sullivan's mother, frequently high on cocaine, works as a waitress:


"When we arrived at the deli one Saturday morning, I said, 'We're home.'

My mother threw open the metal gate. 'Not home Lisa,' she said, puzzled. 'This is work. . . .'

I bolted inside. . .and marveled over the pristine linoleum floors, at the revolving display of potato chips, pork rinds, and Cracker Jack suspended from metal clips near the door. Boxes of Nerds, stacks of watermelon gum on the racks in front of the register boxes of pasta and tissues perfectly arranged on the shelves. Cans of Coke, Tab, and Pepsi in gleaming rows behind the clear refrigerator doors at the back of the store.

'We could live here,' I said.

'This isn't our home,' [my mother] said."


Her mother would subject her to severe mental cruelty, and then rush to protect her. Felicia was emotionally abused, but she was not, at least not always, a neglected child. She was loved, to the extent that her mother was capable of loving a child, but the love was doled out in scraps and shards. Thus at Coney Island, age nine:


"'Take me on the rides,' I said.

All the rides in Coney Island have a height requirement, and a flat palm halted us at each ticket booth. But with a quick glare from my mother, we were ushered past the chain ropes and we hopped on the pirate ship shaped like a giant canoe. She buckled me in, yanked on the strap, hard. . .we clutched each other's hands as the boat began to swing faster. I loved this thrill -- the stomach drop, the quick, stolen breaths, the momentary fear that the ride would never stop, we could fall, and the ground would give way. We were wild-eyed; raising our arms, we screamed. . . .

Coming off the ship, my legs wobbled. . . . Massaging my neck, she asked if I was okay, if I wanted to go home.

'I want to be here,' I said."


They were poor and moved constantly. Sullivan and her mother reversed roles, with Sullivan, not yet a teenager, taking charge when her mother passed out. There was a stream of boyfriends (men in her mother's life); blessedly, one of the good ones became almost a real father to her. Sullivan's mother called her a thief and then forced her to help steal money:


"'We have to go,' [her mother] said. 'Put on your clothes.'

'Go where? It's the middle of the night.' I was scared that she had lost it, that she finally had gone crazy. Because she looked crazy. . . .

When I didn't say anything didn't move, my mother stripped the blankets off my bed. 'I need you to keep watch for us. We need this money. Don't you understand how much I owe?'

'Not me,' I said in a small voice.

'Who else if not you?'

I slid to the floor an drew my knees up close, allowing what she'd said to sink in."


Cocaine was Sullivan's nemesis and savior:


"'So what was it [cocaine] like?' Emily asks. . . .

We hear jackhammers and power drills outside, shaking bodies handling great machines, cracking the pavement, spilling hot tar.

'It's like Broadway up my nose,' I say."


Your past informs the present time of your life, and vice versa, with the present shaping all of your memories. So I like the way the book is organized -- a natural segueing back and forth between the now and then of a life recalled.

Read this stunning memoir. Sullivan's writing is lively, all grace and grit, and you will not find many more accomplished wordsmiths writing today.



Arlene Sanders

Excellent, but emotionally tough to read. Surviving a tough chilhood is hard, thriving and blooming is a miracle and that is just what Felicia Sullivan has shown us in her memoir. A drug addict mother, multiple men trapesing through her life, abuse and neglect and yet she shows us humor and just plain gumption as she finds her way to adulthood.

I am always one for a sad childhood story...the seedier the better. However, I just could not get into this book. The dream sequences bored me especially since I don't want to hear about my own family's dreams so why do I care about that of a strangers? Also, her adult life just was not that bad. Okay, so you have an addiction problem. While I sympathize with this, I just couldn't muster up anything inside to feel sorry for this (unsure of her nationality just as she is)- American Princess. She needs to move to the Midwest and discover that life isn't all about brand name shoes and bags and "Yale Crews".