From Scarsdale : A Childhood

From Scarsdale is an evocative and lyrical memoir of a haunted childhood in Scarsdale, New
York.

With a cancer diagnosis in his early forties, the author is compelled to revisit and resolve the mystery of his familys sadness. The fourth of six children in an Irish-American household distinctly out-of-place in this affluent suburb of New York City, OBrien grows up in a claustrophobic milieu of secrecy, lies, and mental illness. The turning point in his maturation is an older brothers attempted suicide - an event he witnesses firsthand.

From Scarsdale traces with sensitivity the complex histories and dynamics that lead to this trauma, as OBrien investigates the psychologies of his parents, themselves the survivors of painful childhoods in Scarsdale. Then, simultaneously disturbed and catalyzed by his brothers depression, and his
own developing obsessive-compulsive disorder, the adolescent OBrien discovers literature and the theatre as an escape, though it will take years for an actual liberation to occur. In many ways this memoir is that liberation, as his ambition here has been to tell "the story of who I am and where Im from, with honesty, insight, and something like forgiveness. To try to leave the old place behind."

With the specificity and aching affection of William Maxwells Ancestors, and the impressionistic, mosaic-like structure of Michael Ondaatjes Running in the Family, this books subject is ultimately, like all memoir, the solace and the conundrum of memory. From Scarsdale is a rare book, uniquely told, and a poignant example of the redemptive power of a true story.