With or Without You
A Memoir
By Domenica Ruta
(Spiegel & Grau, Hardcover, 9780812993240, 224pp.)
Publication Date: February 26, 2013
Other Editions of This Title: Compact Disc
Categories: Parenting - Motherhood, Personal Memoirs, Family Relationships
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A haunting, unforgettable mother-daughter story for a new generation—the debut of a blazing new lyrical voice
Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, unforgiving town north of Boston, in a trash-filled house on a dead-end road surrounded by a river and a salt marsh. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious local figure, was a drug addict and sometimes dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, and whose highbrow taste was at odds with her hardscrabble life. And yet she managed, despite the chaos she created, to instill in her daughter a love of stories. Kathi frequently kept Domenica home from school to watch such classics as the Godfather movies and everything by Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, telling her, “This is more important. I promise. You’ll thank me later.” And despite the fact that there was not a book to be found in her household, Domenica developed a love of reading, which helped her believe that she could transcend this life of undying grudges, self-inflicted misfortune, and the crooked moral code that Kathi and her cohorts lived by.
With or Without You is the story of Domenica Ruta’s unconventional coming of age—a darkly hilarious chronicle of a misfit ’90s youth and the necessary and painful act of breaking away, and of overcoming her own addictions and demons in the process. In a brilliant stylistic feat, Ruta has written a powerful, inspiring, compulsively readable, and finally redemptive story about loving and leaving.
Praise for With or Without You
“A luminous, layered accomplishment.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Bracingly funny and poignant.”—The Boston Globe
“Stunning . . . comes across as a bleaker, funnier, R-rated version of The Glass Castle and marks the arrival of a blazing new voice in literature.”—Entertainment Weekly
“A singular new coming-of-age memoir traces one girl’s twisting path up from the mean streets (and parents) to the reflective life of a writer. . . . The burgeoning canon of literary memoir—spiked with a generous pour of 12-step-program confessional—begets another winner in Domenica Ruta’s searing With or Without You. . . . In spite of the glaring deficits in her life, Ruta was born ‘with a wolfish appetite for the printed word.’ . . . Luckily, her word addiction kept progressing until she had all the tools she needed to create this gloriously gutsy memory-work.”—Elle
“The intensity of the clear-eyed manner in which Ruta conveys her abiding frustration with the parents who failed their child so casually and monumentally is exceedingly powerful stuff.”—Booklist
“Valiant and heartbreaking.”—Bust
“Domenica Ruta is a real and excellent writer who has language by the throat. She writes with big beauty and drives her story with huge humanism, empathy, and humor.”—Gabrielle Hamilton, author of Blood, Bones & Butter
“Powerful . . . wicked funny . . . Ruta writes with unflinching honesty.”—Slate
“Difficult childhoods are plentiful, the talent to transform adversity into art in short supply. Unflinching in its regard, forgiving in its humor, With or Without You is that rare thing, a story you think you know transformed into one you have to read to the end.”—Kathryn Harrison, author of Enchantments
Domenica Ruta was born and raised in Danvers, Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. She was a finalist for the Keene Prize for Literature and has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, Jentel, and Hedgebrook.
Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class Massachusetts town with a mother who dreamed big � but also bashed in windshields with a baseball bat and hung around with drug dealers. Her new memoir, With or Without You, is a harrowing but beautifully written account of her life with � and her efforts to break away from � her mother. More at NPR.org
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Domenica Ruta's new memoir chronicles her youth in a working-class Massachusetts town, the daughter of a wildly flamboyant mother, an addict and sometime dealer who thought nothing of bashing in the windshield of a woman who'd broken her brother's heart. More at NPR.org
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“A luminous, layered accomplishment.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Bracingly funny and poignant.”—The Boston Globe
“Stunning . . . comes across as a bleaker, funnier, R-rated version of The Glass Castle and marks the arrival of a blazing new voice in literature.”—Entertainment Weekly
“A singular new coming-of-age memoir traces one girl’s twisting path up from the mean streets (and parents) to the reflective life of a writer. . . . The burgeoning canon of literary memoir—spiked with a generous pour of 12-step-program confessional—begets another winner in Domenica Ruta’s searing With or Without You. . . . In spite of the glaring deficits in her life, Ruta was born ‘with a wolfish appetite for the printed word.’ . . . Luckily, her word addiction kept progressing until she had all the tools she needed to create this gloriously gutsy memory-work.”—Elle
“The intensity of the clear-eyed manner in which Ruta conveys her abiding frustration with the parents who failed their child so casually and monumentally is exceedingly powerful stuff.”—Booklist
“Valiant and heartbreaking.”—Bust
“Domenica Ruta is a real and excellent writer who has language by the throat. She writes with big beauty and drives her story with huge humanism, empathy, and humor.”—Gabrielle Hamilton, author of Blood, Bones & Butter
“Powerful . . . wicked funny . . . Ruta writes with unflinching honesty.”—Slate
“Difficult childhoods are plentiful, the talent to transform adversity into art in short supply. Unflinching in its regard, forgiving in its humor, With or Without You is that rare thing, a story you think you know transformed into one you have to read to the end.”—Kathryn Harrison, author of Enchantments
“In the world of memoir, Mary Karr’s and Geoffrey Wolff’s exceptional books burn and brighten, like actual stars among strings of tinsel. With or Without You is like that. I will read whatever Domenica Ruta writes.”—Amy Bloom, author of Where the God of Love Hangs Out
“Freakishly brilliant, brilliantly freakish, this is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Domenica Ruta has done something every artist with a failed family must do: She has created herself.”—Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story
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