In Spite of Everything

May 23, 2011
For Thomas (Buy, Buy Baby)âand scores of other Gen-Xers, she positsâlife's defining question wasn't "where were you when Kennedy got shot?" but "when did your parents split up?" Divorce and its ripple effect shape this keenly felt memoir as Thomas recounts a childhood cleaved in half by her parents' ugly separation and her shock as her own seemingly solid marriage ends. Raised in Berkeley and Philadelphia by her academic mother and a father whose dependence on alcohol made him either a jovial prankster or a sullen drunk, Thomas turned to punk rock, drugs, and alcohol when her parents split when she was 13. After graduating from Columbia, she landed a fact-checker job at PC Magazine in 1991, where she met her husband, Cal. It seemed almost too perfect. Gen-Xers weren't supposed to fall head over heels in love: this was the latchkey generation fueled by rejection, neuroses, and benign neglect. But Cal and Thomas married and had two girls in Brooklyn, even as their marriage rotted away, and they bitterly divorced after 16 years. As much a meditation on her own life as it is an examination of Gen-Xers and what it means to find your way when, as she quotes the words of Nirvana, "all alone is all we are,"Thomas's voice is clear even when darkness surrounds her.

May 15, 2011

Former US News & World Report senior editor Thomas (Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds, 2007) examines the zeitgeist of her generation in this compelling memoir.

"For most of my generation—Generation X—there is only one question," she writes. " 'When did your parents get divorced?' " The author castigates the self-absorption of her own parents, who even before the dissolution of their marriage neglected her and her younger brother, virtually abandoning them to the care of live-in babysitters. "One of the things I have always despised so intensely about Boomers and their divorces was how breathtakingly egocentric they were," she writes. "They were so eager to trade in their children's very sense of safety in the world for access to an unfettered sex life and a sense of 'personal fulfillment.' " The author blames her parents for her adolescent slide into a punk-rock subculture. At 19, she pulled herself together, enrolled in college and became a workaholic in pursuit of a career in journalism. She met Cal, her husband-to-be, at her first full-time job at a computer magazine. They lived together for six years, then married and had two children—divorcing in 2007 to her intense dismay. Until the birth of her children, she was bedeviled by an inner sense of worthlessness and depended upon her husband for emotional support. Their married life was built upon their devotion to their children—she scaled down her career, and they both worked from home—but as a couple they drew further apart. Thomas chronicles how, despite her critical view of consumer culture, they became enmeshed in home ownership and what she describes as nest-building. Major events such as 9/11 are only touched on as they impinge on her family and providing a secure environment for children.

The author sheds light on an unresolved, multigenerational crisis in American family life, typified by the divorce rates.

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July 1, 2011
Investigative journalist Thomas tells the story of her childhood, her parents' breakup, and her ensuing trauma and also profiles a generation affected by divorce. Combining personal narrative, case studies, and statistics, she divulges what too many Generation Xers endured and articulates their pain, too often culminating in repeating their parents' mistakes. With surprising clarity and objectivity, she dissects her troubled relationship with her alcoholic father, ruminates on her subconscious attempts to replace the absent patriarch with romantic partners, and proceeds to analyze her own marriage, child rearing, and eventual divorce (It is a well-worn axiom that if you want to learn what is unhealed from your own childhood, have children, she observes). She uses social science findings to generalize and render her sometimes horrific memoir accessible to any Xer, victim of divorce or not. Some may feel this anthropological read seeks bragging rights for the worst childhoods, but even they may ultimately find it a witty, thought-provoking book on the challenges of family.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)