The Sky Isn't Visible from Here

by Felicia C. Sullivan

A breathtakingly honest portrait of a woman who survived the childhood from hell, with a violent and abusive addict mother, only to face her own deadly battle - with herself ...Felicia Sullivan survived the childhood from hell with a violent and abusive addict mother, only to face her own deadly battle - with herself ... Swaggering down mean streets, Rosie was once beautiful, impetuous and wild, afraid of no one. Cocaine turned her into a monster her child could not recognise. As a little girl Felicia Sullivan was forced to become her mother's keeper, rushing her to hospital when she overdosed, withstanding her terrifying rages and abusive boyfriends, and wondering why she wouldn't tell the truth about her real father. In the Sky Isn't Visible From Here, Sullivan looks back on her life among drug dealers and substitute 'fathers', the highs and terrifying lows of her mother's cocaine addiction, and her battle to escape the same fate. Ashamed of her past, she invented a fake new identity to show the world. Yet despite putting herself through an Ivy League university and forging an outwardly successful high-powered career, like her mother she eventually succumbed to the same terrifying alcohol and drug abuse. Sullivan wrote this breathtakingly honest and moving memoir when she realised that it was time to kill her own creation, and save her life. 'that Felicia Sullivan survived her early life would be miracle enough ... Read this book at your own peril. It will keep you awake at night and haunt your dreams.' Dani Shapiro, author of Family History 'A poignant memoir palpates the wounds of growing up with an unstable, cocaine-abusing mother ...' Publishers Weekly ' this book will break your heart, and make it stronger.' Janice Erlbaum, author of Girlbomb

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Addiction, Autobiography, Biography, Biography Memoir

288 pages, Paperback

First published February 5, 2007

About the author

Hi, Everyone! Welcome to my bookish home.

I’m an award-winning published author (psst: my memoir, The Sky Isn’t Visible From Here was published in 2008) with a novel, Follow Me Into the Dark coming out in March of 2017. I’m a proud Fordham + Columbia graduate who has built businesses and brands for nearly two decades. Now, I’m a free agent (translation: consultant) and CEO of an all-women creative marketing collaborative Phoebe & Kate, working with mid-sized agencies and billion-dollar brands. Essentially, I help smart people tell great stories. I’m passionate about creativity online and off, whether I’m helping to build businesses, crafting short stories, or photographing bread loaves fresh out of the oven. While I’m a clean eater, I’ve never met a blueberry crumble muffin or a truffle macaroni and cheese I didn’t like.

My blog, Love. Life. Eat. is a celebration of my two great loves: food + writing. You’ll find works-in-progress, recipes from my kitchen and favorite cookbooks, and books I’m reading along the way.

I was born + raised in New York and now I call Los Angeles home.

Reviews

[Barbara Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned about this book from reading a couple of articles on Medium.com.
Curious about the author, I ordered the book.
She’s a daughter of a drug addicted mother, who will eventually will turn to substance abuse herself.
The book is about looking back on her life among drug dealers and substitute “fathers” the highs and terrifying lows of her mother’s cocaine addiction, and her battle to escape the same fate.

Ashamed of her past, she invented a new fake identity to show the world. Yet despite putting herself through an Ivy League university and forging an outwardly successful high–powered career, like her mother she eventually succumbed to the same terrifying alcohol and drug abuse.

She writes: In the spring of nineteen ninety-seven, 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 month she locked herself behind her bedroom door and emerged only to buy cigarettes. I spent the greater part of my life feeling abandoned by my mother. Yet she’d always return —

Brooklyn 1985
page 3
in Brooklyn, my mother and I lived with a man named
Avram who taught me two sentences in Hebrew: I love you and I need five hundred dollars.

Page 23: Would I find her if I could, don’t I want to find her, doesn’t she want to be found and forgiven? As if it’s up to me alone to find her. To make mother and daughter whole. People take comfort in these reconciliation stories; they can’t manage the black and white of it, the possibility that love can be extinguished, that, when continuously tested, love can desolve. Love is conditional. People need simple answers from me: that I am filled with regret, that I’m lost without her, that I love her still. I want to explain that the last time I felt safe was when I was nine, before cocaine, before it hurt to love her. With her, love and fear were one and the same, with every kiss came a pinprick, with every hug came a lashing out. My mother was my first hurt.

Interview in the back of the book page 258
she’s always been my subject — I can’t really recall a time in which my work hasn’t revolved around her — the one person I couldn’t, but desperately wanted to, understand.

For years I was working on a novel of lifeless, unlikable characters that did mildly interesting things. I was writing a safe book because I was afraid to commit my memories, this horrific life lived, this very unsafe book, to paper.

I was ashamed my past, of living in poverty, of a mother who loved and terrorized me.

I had lived a life of my own invention for so long, I couldn’t imagine otherwise. At one point the weight of these two lives — the accomplish, in control professional and the frightened child who never really mourned the loss of her mother — were becoming difficult to bear. Something had to give. Shamed into secrecy we were made to feel shamed by our mothers, our impoverished upbringing, and a culture in where not loving your mother is unthinkable.

I thought it would be judged because of my humble background, the fact that my mother was a drug addict. Her mother always told her that vulnerability is a weakness, disease, and for a great portion of my life she wasn’t able to cry unless she was drunk and finally let her guard down


The book structure is episodic. Not in chronological order. The past is very much present for me and vice versa. The story of my life is a great puzzle in this book was about trying to assemble the pieces in a way that makes sense to me
When asked how did she finally quit drugs and alcohol I don’t think there was any one moment or epiphany; was rather a series of bottoms, a series of realization that this bracket abusing cocaine and alcohol bracket wasn’t a way to live; it was a way to die although I come from a family of addicts, I didn’t need to become their legacy

I can relate to so much of what she says. Different upbringing for me, but similar feelings.

[Kathleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Normally, I find memoirs some of the best books I read. I love compelling details like the Red Pumas in this book. Perhaps I've read too many books about down and out childhoods recently. I found the book to be very depressing, and choppy the way that she went back and forth in time. One wonders how someone like this was even able to grow up with the neglect, berating, anger. While similar in content to The Glass Castle, I found it to be not nearly as well written.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felicia Sullivan is a skilled writer. I read a previous reviewer who wrote that Sullivan’s writing is 'workshoppy'. Sullivan touches on criticism of her writing in the book. There’s a brief section where she expresses what many writers feel when their work is dismissed out of hand. I felt for her when she wrote about the difficulty of exposing oneself to other people and then getting shot down for errors in syntax and spelling. Workshops are a trust, sacred to me, and participants have a duty of fairness to the writer. Tearing out pages from Strunk and White and one-word potshots are a violation of that trust. What exactly does ‘workshoppy’ mean? Perhaps the author leans a bit hard on 'tricks of the trade,' such as internal rhymes, consonance and the like, but this tendency seems common in writers of her generation and she shouldn’t take the blame for listening to advice that helped her get a book published. I do think Sullivan focused a bit too much on style and not quite enough on substance. I detected what may have been poetry reworked into prose. Nothing really wrong with that, I suppose. Why not just include some poetry in the book? I may be completely off the mark here.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and thought it was well written. I'll confess a prejudice in favor of the author who is my home girl in space but not time. We both grew up in the same part of Brooklyn but I was long gone from there before she was born.

I liked structure of the book, particularly the way she divided her chapters, some into specific years, and others into much longer periods of time. Sometimes a particular year has a theme that needs to be explored while other themes occur over longer periods. I’ll copy this idea if I ever manage to complete my book. One of the last chapters, 'Stop Time,' seems out of place and looks a great deal like an essay that doesn't seem to further the story much. However, I found it to be one of the best-written portions of her book.

There were two plot points in the book that irked me. There was a great deal of foreshadowing about something that never comes to fruition in the book. I felt cheated on that score. In addition Sullivan alludes to something in the latter part of the book and it feels like she’s playing games with the reader. Did it happen or not? It wasn't clear to me and it was too important an issue for her to blur.

There's too much emphasis placed on all the bad things and one gets the distinct feeling that Sullivan overplays her 'poor girl from Brooklyn' hand. While her life was no bed of roses, it seems implausible that she made it so far without more help than she acknowledges in the text. Book dedications alone do not satisfy the requirement in this instance. Authors get to choose what to include in their book. Who am I to say? It just seems like there is a bit too much credit taking for her success and blaming for her problems.

Every sad life includes a few laughs. The dearth of humor detracts from a story that asks for sympathy and imposes so much sadness. We all have friends that can make us laugh and cry and they’re our best friends. Friends that only make us cry are the reason for caller ID. There’s only so much we can take. I still care about what happened but the narrator could have made me care more. Even so, in the end, I did care.

[Katrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Grace Cole · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Possibly not the right time to try and read this, I found it very draining, like watching a World Vision montage of misery...

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was well written, decently engaging, somewhat disturbing, but in the end I keep wondering if the author will inevitably return to a life of addiction? She claims to be done with drugs, but drinks no more than two glasses of wine a week. She grew up with a mother who never told her who her father was. Mom was introduced to cocaine by a boyfriend and from that time on it's one horrific event after another. The author's telling of her story seems to be a drawn out disgorging of the psychological underpinnings of her relationship to her mother and to the men who were not really her father. I'm left feeling like there's something missing.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved, loved, loved this book--couldn't put it down! It's a beautifully horrifying memoir that details Felicia's heinous childhood and yet not once does the author lapse into self-pity. It's brave and completely riveting. Oh, and unless your mom was Hitler, she's going to look pretty great next to Sullivan's.

[Christiana Borack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Troubling memoir reminiscent of The Glass Castle. Felicia grows up on the tough streets of Brooklyn with a drug addicted mother who cares more about the abusive men in her life than her own daughter. Felicia has her own lapses into the world of drugs and dysfunction as a young woman, but pulls herself together and enters Columbia University to work on her career as a writer.

[Jaime · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was okay. Sullivan jumps around a lot in time, and it isn't exactly clear when her mother disappeared, since she seems to pop up later....I did want more self-reflection. Her friend mentions rehab but it is never written about in the book. I didn't get a good feel for the author and I think she could be more accessible to readers.

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horrifying memoir about a daughter's struggle to grow up with an alcoholic and drug addicted mother. We follow Felicia as she begins her descent into the same hell as her mother and are mesmorized as she begins to pull her life around.

[David Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memoir that is art.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fast read. This may be the last in a string of my-life-was-really-messed-up-due-to-my-crazy,-drug-dealing-parent(s) that I read. I've had enough of that already.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

gut-wrenching reading at times

[Sarah Small · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review here:
http://smallworldreads.blogspot.com/2...

[Arlene Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

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. . . ."


Well, then. Issues with the mother. This I can deal with. This I can top, actually. And it all takes place in New York (Brooklyn, Manhattan), where everything is ridiculously scattered and fast. New Yorkers scream and zoom about under the ground like crazed Formicidae, eating things I cannot pronounce -- while I am languidly, safely ensconced in the South, sipping lemonade on a porch. I've seen Sullivan on Internet videos -- a beautiful, brilliant young woman speaking four times faster than I do.

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

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."


I imagine many readers will think that Sullivan is not going to make it as an adult. I don't see how a person can grow up like this and even dream of being a normal adult or anywhere near it:


"I tell Merritt that tomorrow I have an appointment, a consultation to sell my eggs. To cover credit-card debt, rent for the apartment in Little Italy I say, but my friend knows better. Merritt knows how much cocaine eight thousand dollars could buy. . .

'They'll test you.'

'I don't plan on failing,' I say. . . .

'When does your trip back to sobriety begin?'

'Tomorrow,' I say.


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

[fae · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read this like four years ago? idk what 11 year old me was doing reading a book about drug addiction but this book is /gen so good :( it is beautifully written and the story is so heart breaking and it made me feel so empty inside. would like 2 read again now at a (slightly) older age of 15 but yea very good book xoxo

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's always a good sign when you enjoy a book enough to read it in one day.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tough book to read due to the difficulties experienced experienced.

[Aeriel Santos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Painfully beautiful. The parallel between Felicia and her mother was created beautifully.

[Shannon Hugman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't put it down!

[Nicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this. Felicia writes about her complicated and difficult relationship with her mother beautifully. The book chops back and forth in time a bit but it’s not confusing to read.

[Sierra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written memoir, if interested I'd check trigger warnings

[Lacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be so well written.
I cried, I laughed, I felt so connected to Felicia and her mom.
Very beautiful and tragic story.

[A.R. McKenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

It takes guts to write a memoir. Whether your life was plagued by happy moments or ones you want to bury forever, there is no denying the strength and resilience that comes out of writing your own experiences down on paper. After having read Felicia's tale of survival and strength, I am surprised that I haven't come across this book before.

The book jumps from the past to the present, and this helps explain the writer's hectic past while describing her successful career in the present. She wears high end clothes, dines at the best restaurants, and convinces everyone that she is content with her life. The truth is that she is haunted by memories of her mother, who taunts her successes and brings her down at every achievement. You would think that a mother would be proud of her daughter achieving a good life, but this is not the case with Rosie, Felicia's mom. Once her mother is hooked on drugs, she becomes a completely different person, one who abandons her daughter at different times and starts thinking about only herself.

This tale of a lost childhood may be 'old', but it is the way that Felicia writes the book that makes it engaging. She is an excellent writer, one who doesn't leave anything out of detail. She describes the smells, sights and sounds of her childhood like some of the best writers out there. Her ability to be so honest and raw is sometimes intimidating too, especially when she describes her furious mother. Reading about her mother was difficult because she reminds me of all those parents out there who play the victim card. In the end she really believed herself to be the one who deserved better despite the hell she put Felicia through. Under her selfish gaze, there was no one more important than her.

Felicia's broken relationship with her mother ultimately affects her other relationships, including friendships and boyfriends. By the end of the book, she understands that she can no longer continue talking to her mother because it is destroying her from the inside out. She drinks herself to oblivion and snorts coke until she can escape reality. I found myself not judging her. In all honesty, who is brave enough to say fuck you to his or her mother? It is a difficult decision that many people aren't able to do. Whether it is the right or wrong choice is up to the person, but in my eyes Felicia did the right thing.

In some ways The Sky Isn't Visible from Here reminded me of The Glass Castle. It was written very objectively and there wasn't much mention of her emotions. Honestly, this bothered me. I know that a lot of people praise memoirs that force the reader to 'pity' the author, but I have never felt that way when reading my favorite memoirs. This was part of the reason why I struggled between rating this book a three or a four. While it was written beautifully and expertly, I felt that it was missing in her emotional reactions. Perhaps she did this on purpose. Another thing that bothered me a bit was the fact that some of the Spanish was off, but for the most part it was spot on. I found it very cool that she included Spanish culture and dialogue in the memoir when she could have easily left it out.

I found the ending written very well even though it was so sad. It was not only the end of the book but the end of their relationship before she succumbed to drugs. Felicia deserves to be happy and it was so refreshing to know that she overcame her turbulent past and decided to move on from her mother's mistakes. I really felt like Rosie was just trying to bring her down and fed from her unhappiness. So go Felicia!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read other memoirs about their unhappy childhoods in the greater NY area and/or party years during and after college -- usually they are unreadable. However, Sullivan's book works because she's a damn good writer. Sometimes, there really is something to be said for being a trained (MFA), professional writer.

It's also particularly impressive that for her first book, Sullivan chose to plumb her own difficult childhood and wayward 20-something years. It seems to be a stumbling block for many authors to take a step back and look at their own life objectively, whether it's those around them, or themselves. Sullivan and her cast of characters are refreshingly three-dimensional. At first, an ex-boyfriend seems like a standard hipster douche, then we later get to hear what a terrible girlfriend she was to live with -- bravo for Sullivan for letting herself appear so flawed (and without specifically putting the blame off onto her psychologically abusive mother). Even her beloved stepfather shows his weakness of character at one point, when he leans on the college-age Sullivan for support after Sullivan's mother leaves.

In terms of the subject matter, I enjoyed this to a four-star level, but I'm giving it five because I'm so impressed with Sullivan's writing talents. Memoirs by professional writers often come off as "poor me" or "look how awesome I was," but Sullivan drew me in so much I can't wait to read more from her later.

[Carolyn Stanley · Rating 3 out of 5]

NOTE: THREE AND A HALF STARS (not 3)
First of all, somebody smack me and get me off of this Memoir Carousel. Jeeeeez!

Who isn't glued to a story about tragedy? Am I the only one who thinks reading about other peoples darkness is like watching a train wreck? Maybe that's where my memoir kick is coming from.

This story consumed me. I think part of it was being close to the age of the author and identifying w/ her references. The authors relationship w/ her mother throughout the book was unsettling. I kept yelling (to the author) "DON'T GIVE IN, DON'T BUY IT! DON'T GIVE HER MONEY!"
The subject of the moms boyfriend being inappropriate w/ the daughter just hung there. What happened? Did he, didn't he? She definitely implied there was molestation. Did she tell her mom? Though there was a part in the book where the mother (in the car-Felicia's legs were out the window) had some sort of 'vibe' that something was in the air. Hmmmm?

I'd love to know what other readers thought of the first to last chapter (the writing conference?) It was bizarre, maybe I didn't get it. I didn't understand it. It sounded like the author was on acid and at one point I thought the author was in rehab due to some person at the conference chastising them to come in or something? Somebody give me their thoughts on that chapter. Please.

[Em · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another author, by the name of Felicia Sullivan, has moved me by her personal account of the real stories that broke her heart and made it stronger.

The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here tells about the significant moments where the author had to deal with her drug-addicted mother, who is also the main reason why she led a troubled life. She attempted to live double lives where in one she pretended to be exactly what she is not, making up stories and lies about her history and family background. She befriended several people her age seeking for someone from whom she would pattern the ideal life she never had.

In this fateful story, the readers will definitely sympathize with the author, a young girl once, who was deprived of the truth about who she really is. She never met her biological father, she never had a happy and memorable childhood, she didn’t have the opportunity to prove her worth as a daughter, as a student, even as a friend, she never knew who she really is, because her mother manipulated the truth that she deserves.

The interesting thing about the book is that no matter the drama, the author delivered it in a neutral yet direct manner.

Come to witness and learn from the scenes from a life of Felicia Sullivan.

[mads · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book in Lucky Plaza, Singapore when I was in the eight grade along with a bunch of other books. I think it was three for five dollars? I don't remember the exact pricing but it was really cheap so naturally I went a little crazy and bought a lot.

The Sky Isn't Visible from Here is a memoir about Felicia Sullivan's childhood and how it affected her adulthood. Her whole childhood, Felicia had to take care of her drug-addict, absentee Mom and abuse from her stepfathers. I remember at some point in the book she was forced to be in the same room as her parents as they had sex and I could only imagine if something like that happened to me, how would I end up as an adult? I would get pretty fucked up, I think. And that was exactly what happened to Felicia. She became alcoholic and addicted to drugs like her mom.

In a nutshell, this book is a pretty depressing read and I didn't like it very much (mind you, I read this when I was 14, so I had little patience for someone else's misfortunes when I myself was drowning in it), but I also found myself sympathising with the main character once or twice. She did have a shitty life. I think you should give this one a go if you could handle depressing books.

[Engineous · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good autobiography. It's honest in many ways that most autobiographies are not, and her ambivalence about her mistakes and flaws give this an unsettling, thought-provoking realism that you don't find a lot nowadays. It's not perfect; there are no clear-cut decisions, no good/bad divide - it's just fucked up, that's all. And living with what is described as - but never stated as - a truly borderline mother gives you a good hefty dose of fucked-up, in case you were missing any.

While I occasionally got the intense desire to smack the author upside the head for her blindness to how she's come out perpetuating the same system that caused her suffering, the book engulfed me. The writing style is somewhat like Marya Hornbacher's, in an unflinchingly descriptive sense, but Sullivan uses more simplistic wording, giving you the feeling of there simply being far too much to describe if she had taken on the task.

[Ewurama · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by the author of a blog (feliciasullivan.com) I enjoy reading, The Sky Isn't Visible from Here is a memoir told in nonlinear fashion, a series of vignettes and disconnected memories. Sullivan’s story was remarkable to me largely because I know from her blog how radically she’s turned her life around. What made the difference between her and others who had similar experiences as children but spiraled in the other direction, unable to recover? Particularly interesting is that so much of her background is unknown to her—the identity of her father and most of her family, the whereabouts of her mother, the accuracy of her own memories. Also fascinating is her preoccupation with WASP culture during and after her college years, which, I would venture to say, was a means of establishing herself more securely in an elusive but much-desired white identity.