Unraveling Anne

by Laurel Saville

“After all, this is my mother we’re talking about. As her daughter, I belonged to her; as my mother, she also belongs to me. I don’t have her anymore, but I still have her story.” In 1950s Los Angeles, Anne Ford was the epitome of the California golden girl, a former beauty queen and model-turned-fashion designer whose success and charm were legendary. So how is it possible that such a woman could die in squalor, an alcoholic street person brutally murdered in a burnt-out West Hollywood building?

In searching for answers to the heartbreaking trajectory of her mother’s life, writer Laurel Saville plumbed the depths of Anne’s troubled past and her own eccentric childhood to untangle the truth of an exceptional, yet tragic, existence. What she discovered was a woman who was beautiful, well-educated, and talented—yet tormented by internal demons and no match for the hedonistic culture of Southern California in the 1960s and 70s.

With unflinching honesty and stirring compassion, Saville struggles to reconcile the two faces her mother presented the world: the glamour-girl-about-town the public saw and the unpredictable, bitter alcoholic her children knew. Most importantly, Saville explores how what we bring forward from previous generations can shape our own lives, and how compassion and love for a difficult parent can be a person’s bridge to a better life.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Audiobook, Mental Health, Biography Memoir

244 pages, Paperback

First published May 10, 2011

About the author

Laurel Saville is the award-winning author of the novels "Beneath the Trees," "North of Here," and "Henry and Rachel," the memoir "Unraveling Anne" and several other books, as well as numerous articles, essays, and short stories, which have appeared in The Bark, The Bennington Review, Elle.com, House Beautiful, the LA Times Magazine, NYTimes.com, Room and many other publications. Laurel has an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Bennington College.

Reviews

[E.B. Loan · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you were a child of alcoholic parents, you really need to read this book. If you are the grown child of a mentally unstable parent, you really need to read this book. If you like to look inside others rough experiences and thank God that you never had to live through such events...yep, you guessed it, you will love this book.
Laurel Saville does an excellent job taking the reader to haunted corners of living with an unstable parent, sparing the reader nothing. She gives you the raw, gritty truth. Not one to seek out sympathy, she makes it clear her life has been a journey, filled with complexities that some want to compartmentalize: alcoholic, artist, narcissist, drug addict, slut...
All of the former are used to describe her mother, yet none fit as an all inclusive label.
Anne Ford, a young woman with a promising art/fashion design career slides down into the canyon, losing her grip on sanity, and still maintaining her creativity and spark that drew so many to her. But can her daughter Laurel forgive her sins as a mother, reconcile the many pieces that make up Anne, and become a whole person in her own right? It sounds like fiction, but I promise you, it's not. It is the journey of Laurel Saville, as she unravels the mysteries of her mother Anne. I give her tons of credit. it could not be easy to move past the hurts inflicted on her as a young girl.
It is a heavy read.
It is an excellent read.
I highly recommend it.

[Pamela Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laurel’s memoir reminds me again that non fiction can sometimes be way more intriguing than fiction. In Unraveling Anne she revisits her childhood to understand her mother, Anne Ford, a Southern California beauty who was an artist and fashion designer in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Anne’s spiral down into alcoholism and mental illness ends when she is homeless and brutally murdered in a burnt-out run down home she once owned. Laurel recreates her childhood memories about the chaos and emotional confusion of living with a parent losing touch with reality. The constant moving, the endless parties, and the dangerous situations her and her brothers found themselves in. So in the beginning, tentatively, she wonders how much to tell, and then realizes that her path to wholeness is part of the telling. In order to do that she disassembles parts of her mothers life, trying to find out if the stories she told her of her younger days were true: did she really date Marlon Brando? As she started writing this book, the family that could have helped her has mostly died, and the few that remain are dealing with their own issues, so she searches with the fragments she has: her mother’s artwork and art collection by then unknown artists, historical documents about her family, and her own memories of the people who traipsed through her childhood.

Be cautioned: there are many parts that are gritty, and coarse language is used in some parts. Even with that, I think this is an important book for those of us who had parents that were alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. Good insight into the process of understanding, and making peace with your past. Also an interesting book for artists and those involved with art history. This is an AmazonEncore published book, and I read it through the Vine program.

[Michelle McCarrick Truett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really,really enjoyed this memoir. I have the pleasure of knowing the author personally and have worked professionally with her for the past couple of years. She is strong, eloquent, smart and fabulously interesting. This glimpse into her life - to see how she was raised, what she overcame, the questions, the heartbreak and the healing - was captivating. I'm amazed at the worldliness that she had when she was so young to be able to see that her mother's behaviors and actions weren't "normal". Not all kids can necessarily decipher that. Resilience brought her out of the relationship and gave her the ability to do all of the wonderful things that she has done in her life with grace and success.

[Julie P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most everyone thinks the relationship between Edina Monsoon and her daughter, Saffy, is quite funny. Of course that's television, "Absolutely Fabulous", to be exact. But imagine if you really were Saffy, and your mother was constantly drunk, raising you in spite of ignoring you, and constantly inviting strange people into your home. A life filled with stability and rules might actually seem attractive, and not as perverse and rigid as Edina makes Saffy feel. This, in essence, is the life that Laurel Saville lived with her mother. This comparison is not meant to minimize the mother/daughter relationship between Saville and her mother, Anne Ford. It is noted, however, that through, or because of her mother, Laurel Saville truly lived the life of the 60s free spirit, an ersatz hippie lifestyle of love ins, happenings, and beach living. What is so often romanticized by those who lived this life as adults, or those who wish that they had been there, is proven by Saville that, for a child, the alarming lack of structure is really not conducive to a strong, healthy parental bond, or a safe and secure home life. Certainly there are those children who, like weeds, are able to thrive in any environment, but Saville documents her story as that of a lonely, serious child who loved her mother, yet never understood her. Nor was she understood by her mother. Unraveling Anne allows Saville the opportunity to step back through time, to remember her feelings, examine her memories, and seek to gain understanding of what drove her mother's self-destructive behavior and lifestyle to the extent that her mother's life ends with her rape and murder at a relatively young age. Saville doesn't seek to blame, but only to understand, and she is left with many unanswered questions and missed opportunities. As she is only seeking enlightenment, she comes away with a better understanding of what missteps her mother took that prompted her decisions, and caused her mother to turn out as she did. What is missing from this book, and this may be due to requests from her brothers, is any explanation of where they are now, and how they are attempting to heal any emotional scars left by their upbringing. It is apparent that she is holding some things back, but Saville reveals as much as she can allow which one can tell is not the entire story, but we are left with enough of her poignant tale to understand where she is coming from.

[Barbara Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

My last review of 2011 is not one of my best books of the year. This is a very sad book about a tragic woman and her daughter who has tried valiantly to come to terms with the consequences of being Anne Ford's daughter. In the 1950s Anne Ford was beautiful, a talented fashion designer, and an artist living the Hollywood life. She gave birth to three children by two men and proceeded to neglect them for the rest of her life.

Actually Laurel Saville, the daughter, would have been better off if her mother had totally ignored her. In fact, Anne alternately criticized Laurel and abused her in fits of jealousy. Mom wanted a beautiful daughter who would fulfill her dreams, but beginning with puberty Laurel was the object of attention from the men Anne brought home and that infuriated her mother.

Anne Ford was the product of very strict upbringing. She was a beauty queen but her parents were never happy with her. She just couldn't live up to their expectations. The rest of her sad life she was free spirited, a hippy in the 60s, an artist, a drunk, and promiscuous. She thought she loved her children but was incapable of being any kind of a mother so the kids raised themselves.

Laurel lived with her father in New Jersey for some time and learned what a family was, but always suffered from want of love from her mother.

After learning of her mother's death, murder actually, Laurel tried to see another side of her life. Surely there was good in her. Her mother's friend gave her some perspective, and learning about her grandparents' story helped as well. Still, as an adult it's easy to see that Laurel will never truly know her own mother.

A very tragic story that ultimately goes nowhere. I admire the attempt, but Laurel Saville will have to live with the knowledge that it is simply a tragedy.

I received this book from Amazon Vine; it is available from Amazon.com.

[Diane Lybbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saville writes a very moving memoir, of a childhood spent with her free-spirit talented alcoholic mother in California during the 1960s and 1970s. She and her brother have learned to fend for themselves, as the mother opens the house to all manner of artists, musicians, and hippies. Their father is an absent figure, who also doesn't want to bear the responsibility of raising his own children. The mother slips farther down into alcoholism and mental illness, alternately living in her old abandoned house or in a vacant lot. Saville has long-since moved on and tried to build her own life as an adult with her own wants, needs, and ambitions. She lives with resentment and hostility toward her mother, who seems to hold the same opinion of Saville. When her mother is found raped and murdered in the old abandoned house, the family tries to come together to sort things out and come to some peace with their relationships. Clues to her mother's early life come to light when the author finds a box of her mother's notebooks, letters, and miscellaneous personal documents. She seeks to understand better the mother she only experienced as a small child, and to rebuild broken family relationships with her father and siblings. I don't know why so many memoirs are written by female authors about their dysfunctional, mentally ill, addicted mothers. Is it the mother-daughter relationship that is so fraught with emotion and unmet expectations? I don't know, but Saville did a wonderful job. I am beginning immediately on "Henry and Rachel", a novel based on actual letters the author found from her great-grandfather. Saville is an insightful author, bringing her stories to life for the reader.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books about surviving crazy mothers are pretty common in the memoir world - crazy fathers are out there in plenty, too. I've read many of these and put many of them down because they were just so very bleak. I half-expected to be unable to get through Unraveling Anne - imagine my surprise when I read through to the end and was glad of it.

For many the sixties has a rosy, fuzzy glow over it - all love-ins and beads and flowers in the hair and dancing the patchouli hippy dance in the park. No one wants to remember the many casualties of the time - people who really really needed the structure they rejected.

Laurel Saville tells an honest and very sad story about growing up with one of the casualties. Anne Ford, former beauty queen, model, and fashion designer, transformed herself from a success with many friends in the art world to a swollen alcoholic corpse lying in the remains of her burnt out house. The story is awful, but familiar and compelling. Ms. Saville is very methodical in her approach and it is this step-by-step dissection that compels. I found the lives of both women interesting and sad and I was left wanting to know more. In some ways I'm realizing that I want all books like this to be less The Liar's Club by Mary Karr and more James Ellroy's My Dark Places. Ms. Saville is somewhere in the middle, but that's okay. She tells her own story and her mother's story in her own way and it touched me. Not a comfortable read, but a good one.

[Jan C · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll try this again - my comnputer decided I didn't want to write a review.

I remembered Anne Ford - or at least her name.

In life, stuff happens. And it happened to Anne Ford and to her children, by being part of her circle. Now, part of it is the fact that she was essentially an alcoholic, with problems on the side.

It may be that we also have an unreliable narrator. I had some concern that she was only looking on the dark side - there had to be some good times. My mother, too, was the daughter of alcoholics. She had never talked very much about life with an alcoholic (she didn't live with her all of the time).

What shocked me was to find out how long it took Laurel to find something to be proud about - she found out that her grandfather had done some important work as an airplane architect. And how long it took her to find out what Anne's life had really been like before it fell off the skids.

I would probably actually give this book 3.5.

Well written, but I think she spends too long on the dark side.

[Jood · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the title of this book, and the fact that I had never heard of Anne Ford and her legendary fame back in the early 1950's. Unfortunately the title is the only intriguing thing about the book; it was self-indulgent, far too long, but obviously a cathartic experience for the author.

That Ms Saville's mother ended her days as an alcoholic street person and died, violently, in squalor is no surprise, as it's written on the back cover; the mystery is how and why she became that person, especially when she apparently had everything going for her. Her daughter sets out to find answers. The problem is she takes far too long in getting to the point, and I was yawning long before she got there. I agree with the reviewer who suggests it would probably have been better as a fictional book.

Not an enjoyable read and not one I would recommend.

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am only midway through, but I do wish that Laurel would give more details of her own psychology. Having survived (as so many have)crazy parents, I would like to hear about her story, instead of her mother.
I finally finished it and am disappointed. There is simply nothing gained/gleaned for her or the reader. At least in other memoirs like The Glass Castle you gain something from the author on the changes she made in her life and how she came to a resolve regarding her parents. Ms. Seville clearly needs to work out her stuff a lot more; perhaps then she should have written her book.
I realize it was an attempt to find out about her mother, but you don't find put enough to care.

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read these types of books; I think wow my life was worse than this I should write a book. I had an issue with this book because she seemed to bounce around in her stories and it was hard to keep straight. One minute she was talking about her life at 7 and then she starts into a story that happened when she was older in the same chapter I would have found this a better read if it was written in chronological order.

[Kathy Barton · Rating 1 out of 5]

I normally do not rate my books so low, but I really did not like the way this was written. It was very disjointed and hard to follow. The best part was the last chapter where Laurel talked to her mother's Cousin, Alice, and found out what her mom had to dealt with growing up. I felt very sad for Laurel growing up in this terrible situation, but I really did not like her in the story.

[Sherri · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't finish this book. It reminded me of being on the phone with somebody that goes on and on and you just want to hang up. I have great sympathy for everything she went through but I got the gist after the first 50 pages.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Parts of it were so similar to my childhood it was as if the author was telling my story. I did not think I would like this book but it really drew me in. I connected with it.
*received from goodreads giveaway*

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another Mommy Dearest--different characters.

[SundayAtDusk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laurel Saville's book is the antithesis of memoirs like Lies My Mother Never Told Me: A Memoir. Instead of demonizing her alcoholic, narcissistic mother, she instead tries very hard to understand her and her choices. Instead of trying to hold her mother responsible for any and all of the problems of her adult children, Ms. Saville instead takes full responsibility for her life, and any mistakes she made, even as a child. Those with a living narcissistic parent, particularly one born in Anne Ford's generation, might argue it is very easy for Ms. Saville to be so understanding, since she hasn't had to deal with her mother since 1983. There's probably some truth in that thought, but I think Ms. Saville's empathy may well lay more in the fact that she was never much like her mother in the first place, and that she never developed an addiction to alcohol or any other drug. So many of the middle-age memoirists out there demonizing their mothers often seem to have or had similar problems that their mothers have or had.

While Anne Ford's life was sadly interesting, it's actually Laurel Saville's life I personally found most interesting. Ms. Saville was what I once read described in a newspaper article as a "super kid". These where the kids who got up in the morning, cleaned up the house after a parent's drunken party the night before, then got themselves to school on time, where they made excellent grades. In other words, these were kids who raised themselves. The way Laurel Saville talked about how her friends in college made her feel secure and loved, reminded me of another thing I once read in a book by psychologist Rollo May. In it, he proposed that the lack of parental love did not create as many problems in a child as lies about love. He was talking about older teenagers, and he was saying that the ones who knew their parents didn't really care about them were better able to reorient themselves, and to create loving relationships with friends.

Ms. Saville probably figured out early on in life that she couldn't expect any real love from her mother or her father. Unlike martyr mothers, narcissistic mothers don't usually spend much time lying about love; and when they do, it's usually pretty obvious, even to a child, that they are indeed lying. Ms. Saville's father probably caused her the most confusion. He apparently had a secret homosexual or bisexual life, and men with such secret lives tend to be notorious liars. As she pointed out in her book, her father always blamed her mother for his neglect of his own two children. That's often why men with secret lives marry extremely narcissistic women--she will be the "mean mommy" they can always blame for everything. And hopefully everyone will see her as the guilty one, and never ever guess the type of things they are guilty of, such as using and victimizing women and children.

Laurel Saville proved in her memoir that apples do fall far from the tree, although she doesn't try to distance herself from her mother in the book. She actually appears to be using the book to get closer to her long gone mother. She has indeed written a noteworthy memoir, but it is lacking in something. It took me a while to figure it out, too. I think what it is lacking is that the reader ends up thinking about everything more than feeling everything. It's actually the feelings at the end of a book that makes it powerful or not. This memoir was lacking in power because it was lacking in feelings. Ms. Saville says in the beginning of the book that she is a reluctant memoirist, and unfortunately it shows. She just doesn't reveal enough about her life and her overall feelings about her life. For example, she doesn't believe the tired clichés about a bad childhood, such as it makes you a stronger person; but what does she believe? Why does she feel she was born into the family she was born into, when she might as well been dropped out of a spaceship the day she was born? She says she didn't believe in typical child fantasies, like Santa, but what did she fantasize as a child?

It's hard to believe that with a childhood like she had, and during a time when TV was so prominent in a typical child's life, that she did not have some elaborate fantasies about a better life elsewhere. This is not to be nosy, it's just that those type of things are what make readers identify with an author, and feel close to her or him . . . or not close to her or him . . . but at least the reader is feeling something . . . as opposed to just thinking something. I almost think this memoir would have been better off as a fiction memoir. That way, Ms. Saville would have had to deal with all the feelings. Nevertheless, Unraveling Anne was a good read as a nonfiction memoir, and certainly much better than the memoirs written by adult children blaming their mothers for everything.

(Note: I received a free ARC of this book from Amazon Vine.)

[Nancy Loe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Depressing, so don't even start this one if you're not in a good place. I admire the writer for all the ways she overcame having two troubled and uncaring parents. I also admire her for using her craft to work her way through the loss and grief from her upbringing. Mostly though I came away with a terrible feeling at the waste of it all.

[Kathy Heare Watts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won a copy of this book during a Goodreads giveaway. I am under no obligation to leave a review or rating and do so voluntarily. So that others may also enjoy this book, I am paying it forward by donating it a local library.

[Cecilia Jones]

Poignant

Very well written and easy to read. The telling of a daughter only becoming aware of the sacrifices her mother made and the consequence to get actions after her mother's death.

[Lori Bravo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Read

I love memoirs and this memoir of a girl's experience growing up with her "schizophregenic" (makes everyone else go crazy) mother was illuminating and sad at the same time. I grew up with a deaf, schizophrenic mother and could really identify with the author's life.

[Susan Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times, it seems to ramble on

[Nely Shih · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good

A sad story about a talented intelligent woman who entered ways that destructed her.
I hope that the author brother have done well in life as her...

[Dani Peloquin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Today seems to be the era of the memoir and while I adore reading, I do not also adore memoirs. However, I am always willing to be proven wrong and recently...I have been proven wrong many many times! I was on a memoir high when I decided to take a stab at this one. The synopsis that the published released sounded very appealing to me because it sounded a great deal like mine and my mother’s life with some of our relatives. I found a great deal of closure in this memoir for myself and even lent the book to other members of my family. Unfortunately, for the average memoir-reader, I don’t know that this book would be that appealing.

To say that the author Laurel Saville had a tumultuous relationship with her mother, Anne, is to say that the Crusades were unpleasant. Laurel begins her mother’s story by telling of Anne was found murdered in possibly sexually assaulted in an abandoned building in West Hollywood. Upon hearing this news, Laurel decides to shelf the matter as dealing with her and her mother’s past will only hurt Laurel. When Laurel’s father becomes ill, she finally decides that it is time to come to terms with her mother’s death and her life. Laurel decides to research her mother’s murder and in doing so pulls the curtain back on her own damaged childhood. She writes about the long line of destructive and abusive men that tramped through her mother’s life; the fluctuating emotions that her mother had when drinking (and she was always drinking); and her inevitable decision to move to the other side of the country in hopes of releasing herself from her mother’s grasp. Anne’s erratic behavior, narcissistic nature, and inability to raise her children led to fractured family in which Anne was always the child and expected to be taken care of by either her grandparents or children.

While it is difficult to read such a story, it is even more arduous to have any kind of compassion of sympathy for Anne. Yet, Laurel is not the kind to be victimized or vilify her mother. Instead, she presents the facts and makes sure that the reader understands that they are presented from her point of view. Additionally, she presents the memoir in an anti-chronology. Instead of starting with her birth or her mother’s upraising, she begins with her mother’s death. She then jumps around in time between her childhood, her adulthood, Anne’s childhood, and Laurel’s adolescence. For some readers, this may be distracting and difficult to understand. However, I thought that is matched the memoir perfectly. She presents her stories as memories which are no sequential. It might make it harder for the reader, but it’s more true to life and memory.

While I was pretty entranced by the memoir, I cannot fully endorse it. The reason being that I don’t know how many people will really enjoy. As I previously stated, I could relate to the story and therefore found it merits. For those who have not had a fractured family such as Laurel’s, you may find the memoir self-indulgent or even tedious. Additionally, this is not a memoir specifically about Anne so if you are looking for a story about the dark side of Hollywood as seen through the eyes of a 1960s model...this is not the book for you. This is just as much Laurel’s memoir as it is her mother’s. Personally, I think that the book could benefit from some photographs. Many of the descriptions of Anne focus on her great beauty and eventual disintegration, similar to Dorian Gray. Unfortunately, there aren’t any photographs to back this up. I was able to find some online, but it’s a bit of a hassle when they easily could have been printed in the book. Lastly, while the writing was beautiful and I found the story to have worth, it seemed more like a personal project that had somehow been published. I am sure it was a catharsis for Laurel but I don’t know how well it will play out with larger audiences. I do believe it has a future, I am just unsure what or where that is.

www.iamliteraryaddicted.blogspot.com

[Laurel-Rain · Rating 4 out of 5]

The relationship between a mother and a daughter can be conflicted and tenuous at best. Sometimes the ties that bind are slippery slopes that, upon closer scrutiny, reveal how much the mother's disappointments are reflected back to her when she gazes at her daughter.

When the author of "Unraveling Anne" begins her story, she jolts the reader with the fact of her mother's tragic end immediately. She describes how others react to the word. She says:

"My mother was murdered.

"It's a shocking word, murdered. I don't like to use it. But it is the truth. Murder is the only word that honestly describes her death. So sometimes, when someone asks what happened to my mother, instead of holding onto this word, toying with the small pain of it as if it were a loose tooth, I go ahead and spit it out. No matter how many times I do, no matter how many people I tell, the raw strangeness of the fact of my mother's death never changes...."

Thus begins the chronicling of a life, by first reenacting her death. Years before, when the author first learned of the tragedy, she was living on the opposite coast; her journey to deconstruct her mother's life and death begins twenty years later with a visit to LA and an examination of the murder book.

Saville's descriptions of growing up in LA in the sixties and seventies and the ongoing party that was her mother's life are interspersed with tales of her mother's beauty, her art, and how the daughter felt proud of her in those moments. But as the party guests morph from artists, musicians, and celebrities to street people, and as Anne's drinking consumes her life, there now remains an eerie and gritty detritus that shows little resemblance to what once was. The beautiful model, designer, and golden girl has toppled into disarray.

The moments of pride fade away, and the author recalls "taking care of herself," but she adds that this necessity helped her develop self-reliance. There was also a supportive presence of a grandmother nearby, along with the libraries where she found comfort after school, and even teachers who built up her self-esteem.

So the story continues, as the author resurrects her childhood and those memories, and then goes deeper into an examination of her mother's life. She is startled to discover at some point that the grandparents who were the stopgap caretakers were also the two who first helped "create" the fears, insecurities, and demons that taunted her mother. And the generation before them had its own role in the damage inflicted. In understanding those who came before, the author begins to understand and accept who she is, in spite of, and because of, her mother.

In the haunting cover photo, in which the photographer is carrying out the mother's wish to create "income-producing models or actors," we see the tattered theater seats set up by the photographer who displayed, along with the author (as a child), the "detritus of my mother's modeling days—dresses with beads falling off, bright boas that left feathers floating in the air, floppy hats with bent flowers on the brims—"

A gritty, revelatory exploration that was occasionally difficult to follow, as it jumped around chronologically, I still could not put it down. I am awarding this memorable memoir four stars.

[Lormac · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir sends the story of Anne Ford's life through the prism of her daughter's eyes, but the resulting vision is a littl out of focus.

On one hand, I found this a fairly typical memoir of the "harrowing childhood" genre (i.e., see "The Glass Castle" and "Running With Scissors"). Anne Ford's talents were fostered by her seemingly loving, albeit ambitous, parents. She was beautiful, energetic, and had a promissing future as a model, clothing designer and artist. Anne also had the advantage of being where the action was in American history. She lived in NYC during the late 40s and early 50s, dating Marlon Brando, writing for Glamour magazine, and modeling. Then she re-located to LA in the late 50s and early 60s as the modern art scene began to blossom on the west coast. Her LA home was the site of many parties which shifted from bongo drums and capri pants to dope and tie dyed caftans. Anne seemed to be a magnet for the cultural center of America. So how did she end up deranged and semi-homeless, a street person whose life was so chaotic that her murder went unsolved for many years? Answer: Alcohol and mental illness (if one can call narcissism a mental illness).

The author does her best to "unravel" her mother's life, but ends up blaming others - Anne is "used and abandoned" by the men in her life; and "set up for failure" by her parents who continue to financially support her (and her children)into her 60s. The author's exploration of her mother's heritage is supposed to make the reader understand the underlying causes of her failures, but, to me, the stories of her grandparents and parents only seemed to underscore the possibility that a person can overcome adversity with some effort. The most revealing section is in the last chapter where the author finally contacts a relative who was Anne's roommate in her NYC days (the fact that this individual was not discovered at the outset of this story begs belief).

I stuck with this book because I really liked the author's depiction of herself. I thought she was very perceptive about her own behaviors, and I admired her honesty. Laurel Saville is the main reason to read this book.

In any event, if you are the type of reader who LOVED "The Glass Castle," you will probably love this book as well. (I hated "The Glass Castle.")

[Bonnie Morse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laurel Saville's memoir of life with a once-famous and now drunk and abuse mother is both fascinating and hard to read. Her mother, Anne Ford, was a rising force in fashion design in the fifties until, according the majority of the book, she became disillusioned (or possibly downright lazy), and lives out the rest of her life on dead dreams and inheritances stolen from her children. It's a sad picture of a broken woman, written by a critical daughter who was apparently perfect in every way by the age of six. Much of it is pieced together from a distance as Laurel left her mother's home at the age of 13 and apparently only saw her again two or three times, for a few hours.

After beginning with her mother's horrific murder in the burned out shell of the family home where she was squatting during her final years and spending well over 300 pages tearing the dead woman to shreds, she generously gives the last four or five pages to a detailed explanation of Anne's life before children, which explains so much it should totally be the first chapter. It kind of comes off as an attempt to get readers completely on her side and hating the abusive, mentally ill woman who gave her life, and then in a passing gesture at fairness, casually mentions that she was abused herself and had very little chance of ever being anything other than what she was. Personally, I thought it was too little, too late.

Maybe that's partly because Laurel's writing style is also slightly pretentious, as if she can distance herself from her abysmal beginnings if she just crams in enough five dollar words. She can't help trying to convince us that she really is smarter and better than her parents (her dad was no prince, either). Unfortunately this means she uses a lot of big impressive words that, if you're actually familiar with them (or have a dictionary), you can't help noticing aren't really accurate. It's very subtle, but I came away with the feeling that she was much like her mother than she knew, even after eviscerating both of them all over the floor. In a way, that was the saddest part.

[DubaiReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather irratic chronology.

I think I would have enjoyed this book more if it had been written more chronologically. The first half, in particular, is a bit jumbled, but events did start to fall into place by the end, giving a more rounded view of Anne Ford's life.
However, the book is not just about Anne, it is also about her daughter, Laurel, the author, and others whose lives were directly affected by Anne's day to day behaviour. Laurel and her brother brought themselves up, learning to cook and clean the house at a very early age. As young as 9 and 10 they were clearing up after their mother's drunken parties while she recovered from the previous night's hangover.
Anne Ford also squandered Laurel's inheritance from her father, a considerable sum.

I felt for Laurel, trying to understand her own background, and I could see why she had shut herself off from it for so many years. She had made a go of her life, while her mother had squandered all her benefits. Sadly this seems to have been a common problem amongst the youth that Anne Ford mixed with, although some did go on to become famous actors and artists.

The veiwpoint of Anne's cousin, Alice, was a good balance to Laurel's understanding of her mother. Alice had known Anne when she was young, beautiful and vivacious and still had a good word to say for her, which was refreshing.
There isn't any clarity about what actually happened in Anne's final days, probably because no-one really knows, but I was left feeling that the story wasn't quite complete.

The subject matter reminded me of Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters, which was a fascinating read. Unfortunately Unraveling Anne didn't grab me in quite the same way and I didn't really end up with a clear picture of how a wealthy, intelligent, beautiful young woman could end up dying in squalor.

A sad tale, that could have been more readable if it hadn't jumped about in time so much.

[Heidi | Paper Safari Book Blog · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was sucked into this intriguing book right from the beginning but then I started to wonder if it was going to be one big pity party. Laurels life was hard, and watching her mother unravel into a drunken homeless person couldn't have been easy. It seems Laurel wore her screwed up mother around her neck like a weight and writing this book was to help her remove the weight and make peace with her past.

Laurel's mother was a neglectful alcoholic genius who never could finish what she started. After reading pieces of the book I wonder if her mother wasn't ADD and if she had been given the correct treatment whether she would have been able to focus better, accomplishing more and not relying on alcohol. But as Laurel knows we can't change the past we can only move forward, but the past is still there and will haunt us unless we make peace with it.

It wasn't until about half way through that Laurel starts to investigate the rest of her family. Trying to discover if her mothers stories were true or just drunken make believe told to explain why her mother was the way she was. In uncovering the past Laurel seems to find some peace and some pride in her family heritage, she also starts to understand her mother a bit more. Through her mothers notebooks and talking to long lost family members she pieces together the story of a very different woman than the one she knew.

As the story unravels Laurel decides to stop running from the past and the pieces of her history that haunt her and start looking for the pieces that made her who she is, the pieces of the women in her life who she never wanted to see in herself but knows are there.

I actually wound up enjoying this book and while the beginning was a bit of a pity party the rest of it makes up for what was lacking.

[Elsie Love · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you were a child of alcoholic parents, you really need to read this book. If you are the grown child of a mentally unstable parent, you really need to read this book. If you like to look inside others rough experiences and thank God that you never had to live through such events...yep, you guessed it, you will love this book.
Laurel Saville does an excellent job taking the reader to haunted corners of living with an unstable parent, sparing the reader nothing. She gives you the raw, gritty truth. Not one to seek out sympathy, she makes it clear her life has been a journey, filled with complexities that some want to compartmentalize: alcoholic, artist, narcissist, drug addict, slut...
All of the former are used to describe her mother, yet none fit as an all inclusive label.
Anne Ford, a young woman with a promising art/fashion design career slides down into the canyon, losing her grip on sanity, and still maintaining her creativity and spark that drew so many to her. But can her daughter Laurel forgive her sins as a mother, reconcile the many pieces that make up Anne, and become a whole person in her own right? It sounds like fiction, but I promise you, it's not. It is the journey of Laurel Saville, as she unravels the mysteries of her mother Anne. I give her tons of credit. it could not be easy to move past the hurts inflicted on her as a young girl.
It is a heavy read.
It is an excellent read.
I highly recommend it.

[Merry Miller moon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would like to thank Goodreads, Brilliance Publishing, Inc. and AmazonEncore, because I won a free copy of this book on Goodreads! In this book the author, Laurel Saville is trying to understand who her mother really was. Her mother, Anne Ford was once a gorgeous model, an actress, a painter, and a talented fashion designer. SPOILERS! Stop reading if you don't want any spoilers! But she is tragically murdered in her burned out former home. She was addicted to booze and men. What would make a mother neglect her children? As I read this book, I was appalled at all the times Anne Ford just didn't care for her three, young children. They were basically left to their own devices at such a young age. In this day and age, Child Protective Services would be called and the children would be removed from the home. But, in the 60's and 70's the children were just left to grow up sooner than necessary. I was outraged when I read about Laurel (Lolly) as her mother called her, lost her virginity to one of the many strange men that her mother had around her house-and she was only twelve, I believe? OMG! NOT COOL! What exactly made her mother go off the deep end? We are left wondering just as Laurel is. Was it mental illness? This book was a stark reminder of the bad relationship that I had with my own mother. But, unfortunately, just like with Laurel, my mother has since passed. I'm not going to dig into my past or my mother's. Good read. I recommend it.