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When Simon Doonan sat down to write a memoir,
he discovered he had no memories of cuddly family times or
romantic Hallmark moments -- turns out most of his memories
are notably nasty. Birthday parties? No recollection. But
his mother's dentures flying out of her mouth when she sneezed
and skittering across the kitchen floor? A vivid mental image
that still brings a smile. In his subversively funny memoir,
Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints, Simon
revisits his formative years and the defiantly eccentric,
lovably odd family he calls his own, showing us how nasty
memories can be very, very good.
Long before he became a celebrity in his
own right—as a bestselling author, as a style arbiter
on national television, and as the window display genius of
Barneys New York—Simon Doonan was a "scabby knee'd troll"
in Reading, England. In Nasty, he returns to the working-class
neighborhood of his youth and chronicles the misadventures
of the Doonan clan in all their wacky glory. Readers meet
his mum, Betty, whose gravity-defying, peroxided hairdo loudly
proclaimed her innate glamour; his father, Terry, an amateur
vintner who turned parsnips into the legendary Château
Doonan; and his grandfather D.C., a hard-drinking betting
man who plotted to win his fortune by turning "wee" Simon
into a jockey.
Fearing he would fall victim to the insanity
that runs in his family or, worse, the banality of suburban
life, Doonan decamps with his flamboyant best friend Biddie
to London. There they hope to find the Beautiful People --
those glamorous creatures who luxuriate on floor pillows and
amuse each other with bon mots -- and join their ranks. Instead,
he encounters various ladies of the night, kidney stones,
punks, law enforcement officers, phantom venereal diseases,
public humiliations, and camps, vamps, and scamps of all shapes
and sizes. Doonan continues his bumbling pursuit of the fabulous
life only to learn, in the end, that perhaps the Beautiful
People were the ones he left behind.
Infused throughout with good humor and
informed by Doonan's keen eye for the ridiculous, Nasty
reminds us never to take life too seriously. This is a wickedly
good memoir from one of today's most dazzling literary humorists.
Simon Doonan is the bestselling
author of Wacky Chicks and Confessions of a Window
Dresser. In addition to his role as creative director
of Barneys New York, Simon writes the "Simon Says" column
for The New York Observer. He frequently contributes
observations and opinions to myriad other publications and
television shows. He is a regular commentator on VH1, the
Trio network, and Full Frontal Fashion. He lives in
New York City with his partner, Jonathan Adler, and his Norwich
terrier, Liberace.
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