Don't Call Me Home - Alexandra Auder

 

I heard a great interview with Alexandra on NPR's Fresh Air a little while ago and thought that this book sounded pretty fascinating so I grabbed it. Auder is Warhol Superstar Viva's first born daughter (she had one more, Gaby, a few years later with a different man) and so she has some wild tales to tell of being born in NYC's Chelsea Hotel (actually Viva went into labor in the lobby but was able to get to a hospital) and traveling the country (and world) with her mother, living a crazy, nomadic life, eventually returning to the Chelsea, being raised in NYC among wild characters, including her drug addict, film-maker father (he worked on Chelsea Girls with Warhol), among lots of others. Of course, the Chelsea is famous for the innumerable r'n'r and film legends who stayed there, and even in the 80's, it was filled with iconic, eccentric characters.

Throughout the book Alexandra moves back'n'forth starting from her earliest times that were captured by her father on video through current days with her mother still acting like a lunatic at times, as the extended family (Alex and her kids, Gaby with hers along with their spouses) try to deal with life with a "Superstar". She describes many encounters with artists of various types, Viva's large clan of sisters, drugs, sex, life on the road and Alex's early experiments'n'fantasies with her close female friends. As I suppose many teens are, she was fairly obsessed with sex - from well before she had her period - and once she finally (in her eyes) "became a woman", she soon found an older boyfriend while going to bars and discos at all hours. 

She goes on and on in great detail on her unhealthy obsession with this man and other, much older men - at least her mom’s age, some of whom her mom dates - while just mentioning in passing seemingly famous movies that she and her sister appear in, with essentially no explanation. As in, I had no idea that either one were actors before she says something about a person that one of them appeared with as she coyly describes what sounds like a blockbuster movie.

I can't imagine growing up with a mother that is as unstable as Viva, who while having untold number of her own breakdowns, vacillates between giving Alex extreme freedom and extreme guilt trips. Alex has to be the grown up quite often - including taking care of Gaby over the years - and has to be the voice of reason, even when she herself is acting out in unsafe ways. 

This is a strange and often vague book - although she will zero in on minute details, she will also leave out huge chunks (like decades) of her life in a seemingly haphazard way, making it a bit of a unsettling read. I guess I expected something different and it wasn't quite what I had expected - whatever that was. Still not 100% sure what I think of this one...