Chanel Bonfire (Lawless) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Lawless leavens her harrowing story with biting humor and never descends into self-pity—but boy, do we feel for her.
People


[A] darkly comic memoir…[Lawless] chronicles her mother’s decline from sparkling femme fatale to desperate drunk in this simultaneously chilling and hilarious tale, whose unmistakable message is that though Lawless has, in some ways, led a privileged life, she never got the one thing she most wanted: her mother’s love.
O Magazine


[A] quick but powerful read that you can only wish was fiction
USA Today


Lawless’s chronicles of life with her charming, wildly unstable mother could be bleak, but the author’s wit, resilience, and compassion make her story illuminating and inspiring.
Reader's Digest


A dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship grows progressively worse with deepening alcohol use and emotional denial as depicted in L.A. actress Lawless's wrought and engaging memoir of growing up in the late 1960s.... [T]he two sisters had to learn how to be resilient at new schools and in social situations, and, above all, to keep people from knowing the truth about their erratic, suicidal, alcoholic mother.... As the elder, the author acted as her mother's enabler and nurse, and with great hindsight conveys her early despair.
Publishers Weekly


The eldest daughter of a disturbed socialite details a 1970s childhood in the shadow of excess and mental illness. "Even half-dead, Mother was beautiful," writes Lawless, who, as a child, watched her mother....[as she] entertained nonstop bed partners, fired the nanny, alienated her ex-husband and generally showboated herself throughout the elite communities of Manhattan, Europe and Boston.... Lawless and her sister miraculously matured and went on to live fulfilling lives.... Frequently entertaining chronicle of a daughter's sad, detached upbringing--but this story's all about the mother.
Kirkus Reviews