Small Fry (Brennan-Jobs) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Entrancing.… Brennan-Jobs is a deeply gifted writer.… Her inner landscape is depicted in such exquisitely granular detail that it feels as if no one else could have possibly written it. Indeed, it has that defining aspect of a literary work: the stamp of a singular sensibility.… Beautiful, literary, and devastating.
Melanie Thernstro - New York Times Book Review


It’s gratifying to see [Ms. Brennan-Jobs] assert her authority as the owner of her narrative. Writing with enlightened panache and dry humor, she’s as keen a witness to the ambience of the Bay Area in the 1980’s and 1990’s …as she is to the behavior of the adults around her.… Never having felt safe in any of her father’s houses, [she] has built her own house in memoir form, a repository of her love and anger and mourning.… It’s alive in all the rough edges of its feelings, and it’s home.
Wall Street Journal


[The] story of a girl growing up in 1980s and ’90s California trying to fit into two very different families and not belonging in either. It’s the story of her single mother trying to keep it together and often not succeeding. It’s the story of a family that is as imperfect as every family, things complicated by wealth, fame and, in the end, illness and death.
Associated Press


An intimate, richly drawn portrait.… Small Fry is a memoir of uncommon grace, maturity, and spare elegance.… The reader of this exquisite memoir is left with a loving, forgiving remembrance and the lasting impression of a resilient, kindhearted and wise woman who is at peace with her past.
San Francisco Chronicle


Mesmerizing, discomfiting reading.… [Small Fry is] a book of no small literary skill.
New Yorker


Extraordinary.… An aching, exquisitely told story of a young woman’s quest for belonging and love.
People


Revelatory.… Her exquisitely written prose allows Brennan-Jobs to—painfully, complexly, heroically—reclaim her own story.
Entertainment Weekly


A masterly Silicon Valley gothic.… The bohemian landscape she captures will be virtually unrecognizable to anyone who equates this slice of Northern California with Teslas and tiger moms.… Of the book’s myriad achievements, the greatest might be making [this] story her own.
Vogue


(Starred review) Bringing the reader into the heart of the child who admired Jobs’s genius, craved his love, and feared his unpredictability, Brennan-Jobs writes lucidly of happy times… [and] loneliness.… [A] sincere and disquieting portrait.
Publishers Weekly


[Lisa's father,] Steve Jobs, [was] barely there until he decided to swoop in to show her the wealthy world of private schools and big vacations. But it wasn't easy. A singular life and California in the Seventies and Eighties.
Library Journal


(Starred review) Bennan-Jobs skillfully relays her past without judgement… [and] never turns maudlin or gossipy.… [An ]authentic story of growing up in two very different environments, neither of which felt quite like home.
Booklist


(Starred review) An epic, sharp coming-of-age story…. In a lesser writer's hands, the narrative could have devolved into literary revenge. Instead, Brennan-Jobs offers [an] exquisitely rendered story of family, love, and identity.
Kirkus Reviews