Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason PDF
Preview Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason
Advance Praise for Blow Your House Down “Compelling, honest, and thought-provoking, Gina Frangello’s memoir is an inspired addition to her astounding body of work.” —Charlize Theron, Academy Award–winning actress “I don’t know anyone who can write like Gina Frangello. I’m in awe.” —Jennifer Pastiloff, author of On Being Human “Truth is a scarce commodity in books about sex and marriage—I mean the real truth, the hard stuff. Blow Your House Down is a truth bomb. Writing with the immediacy of fiction and the acuity of criticism, Gina Frangello gives us her harrowing, luminous, and very real story of love, marriage, and aftermath. It’s a huge act of generosity to write these intimate and risky things that make other women feel less alone. We are left stunned and consoled.” —Claire Dederer, author of Love and Trouble “Blow Your House Down is everything a memoir should be: fascinating, beautifully written, unwilling to turn away from terror and joy while also acknowledging how often they intersect and turn into one another. Frangello refuses to cop to an easy happy ending, shining a light on the platitudes and false promises of our myopic understanding of what constitutes a ‘good life.’ This book burns down our old way of looking and makes way for something bold and new.” —Emily Rapp Black, author of The Still Point of the Turning World “In Blow Your House Down, Gina Frangello has created a form, a structure of her own out of necessity: the need to tell all the stories, especially the ones we feel cannot be told. In the process, she gives us a new language through which we might come to some sort of reckoning with ourselves. This book is an excavation of the deepest and most complex corridors of the heart.” —David L. Ulin, author of The Lost Art of Reading “Urgent, subversive, and brave, Blow Your House Down is a path- breaking feminist manifesto, impossible to put down or dismiss. Gina Frangello tells the morally complex story of her adulterous relationship with a lover and her shortcomings as a mother, and in doing so, highlights the forces that shaped, silenced, and shamed her: everyday misogyny, puritanical expectations regarding female sexuality and maternal sacrifice, and male oppression. It’s a story that is not hers alone—though many will prefer to think so—and one that I will not soon forget.” —Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game “Gina Frangello can always make me think and laugh; she’s also one of the very few authors who’s made me cry. Blow Your House Down is searing, honest, heartbreaking, heart-mending, and a hell of a wild ride. Frangello says things women aren’t allowed to say, even to ourselves.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers “Gina Frangello’s Blow Your House Down blazes open a radical new portrait of a woman’s life with dazzling honesty and breathtaking beauty. Threading through the terrors of breast cancer and caretaking a dying father, navigating the end of a long-term marriage and the burst of new love, Blow Your House Down reveals the epic journey of one woman’s life and body. This book is a heart beating, not beaten. This book is a mighty heartsong.” —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Chronology of Water Blow Your House Down ALSO BY GINA FRANGELLO Every Kind of Wanting A Life in Men Slut Lullabies My Sister’s Continent Blow Your House Down A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason _______________ GINA FRANGELLO Counterpoint Berkeley, California Author’s Note This is a work of creative nonfiction. In it, I describe experiences that had a profound emotional impact on me. The events in this book are true to the best of my recollection. For readability, in some cases I altered the order of or compressed sequences of events. I do not pretend that I am capable of remembering everything that took place exactly or offering everyone’s perspective. This is my story and I write about what struck me personally. To protect the privacy of real individuals, I have changed or left out many names and identifying details, or used composite characters, and in some cases omitted people from the story. To “John LaSalle”—liar, madman, Anglophile, storyteller, and the world’s kindest accidental father—for his rare and unwavering gentleness in a brutal world. And to Alice Merry Frangello, who saw light in every shadowy place and heard music in every person. Mom, your unconditional love and support allowed me to imagine another kind of future and continues to inspire me to become a better version of myself. I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to be a mirror for your whole body, and I never want to be blind, or to be too old to hold up your heavy and swaying picture. I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie. and I want my grasp of things to be true before you. —Rainer Maria Rilke Contents Author’s Note Aperture The Story of A Affair Death’s Monkeysphere Substitute Beauty The Counterevidence of Love Embers What Women Do Aftermath Blow Your House Down Big Blonde The Summer of Light and Dark A Short Dictionary of Mutually Understood Words Blood Moon Affliction Two Ophelias The Cartographers: Fifty Meditations Acknowledgments
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