The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir Review
The Kids are Alright is a memoir about a family growing up in the 1970s. The Welches are a wealthy family who lives in a NYC suburb. The father is an investment banker and the mother an actress who stars in several soap operas and commercials. A tragedy causes the family to fall apart. In the 70s, the family was rocked by a shocking car accident that took their father's life and the discovery that he was millions of dollars in debt. A month later, the mother discovers she has cervical cancer. In 3 years, the mother dies with her children largely being forced to be her caretakers. A trust fund the mother set up for the children largely saves the kids from poverty but without parents the children are adrift. Drugs, alcohol combined with expensive prep schools, boarding schools and elite colleges are the lives of the three oldest children. The youngest, at eight, is sent off to live with a wealthy family and constantly pressured to forget her family and blend in with theirs. This books contains recollections from all four children and varies in story and content. I found the stories of all very honest and well spoken. I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in families and what happens to orphans in the US.
The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir Overview
“Perfect is boring.”
Well, 1983 certainly wasn’t boring for the Welch family. Somehow, between their handsome father’s mysterious death, their glamorous soap-opera-star mother’s cancer diagnosis, and a phalanx of lawyers intent on bankruptcy proceedings, the four Welch siblings managed to handle each new heartbreaking misfortune in the same way they dealt with the unexpected arrival of the forgotten-about Chilean exchange student–together.
All that changed with the death of their mother. While nineteen-year-old Amanda was legally on her own, the three younger siblings–Liz, sixteen; Dan, fourteen; and Diana, eight–were each dispatched to a different set of family friends. Quick-witted and sharp-tongued, Amanda headed for college in New York City and immersed herself in an ’80s world of alternative music and drugs. Liz, living with the couple for whom she babysat, followed in Amanda’s footsteps until high school graduation when she took a job in Norway as a nanny. Mischievous, rebellious Dan, bounced from guardian to boarding school and back again, getting deeper into trouble and drugs. And Diana, the red-haired baby of the family, was given a new life and identity and told to forget her past. But Diana’s siblings refused to forget her–or let her go.
Told in the alternating voices of the four siblings, their poignant, harrowing story of unbreakable bonds unfolds with ferocious emotion. Despite the Welch children’s wrenching loss and subsequent separation, they retained the resilience and humor that both their mother and father endowed them with–growing up as lost souls, taking disastrous turns along the way, but eventually coming out right side up. The kids are not only all right; they’re back together.
From the Hardcover edition.
The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir Specifications
Parker Posey Reviews The Kids Are All Right
As adults, the Welches have remembered the past as they did when they were children, giving us a window into the survival meachanisms of personality, of the the capacity to undergo huge blows of fate, of the manifestations of surviving that fate--and the soulful bonding of siblings to regenerate what was lost. This book carried me along with such speed and emotion and intimacy that I felt cast in the role as their imaginary friend. This book is their song and it will rock you along.--Parker Posey
More from The Kids Are All Right: Pictures of the Welches
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