With or Without You

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A haunting unforgettable mother-daughter story for a new generationthe debut of a blazing new lyrical voice. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class unforgiving town north of Boston in a trash-filled house on a dead-end road surrounded by a river and a salt marsh. Her mother Kathi a notorious local figure was a drug addict and sometimes dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches and whose highbrow taste was at odds with her hardscrabble life. And yet she managed despite the chaos she created to instill in her daughter a love of stories. Kathi frequently kept Domenica home from school to watch such classics as the Godfather movies and everything by Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen telling her This is more important. I promise. Youll thank me later. And despite the fact that there was not a book to be found in her household Domenica developed a love of reading which helped her believe that she could transcend this life of undying grudges self-inflicted misfortune and the crooked moral code that Kathi and her cohorts lived by.. With or Without You is the story of Domenica Rutas unconventional coming of agea darkly hilarious chronicle of a misfit 90s youth and the necessary and painful act of breaking away and of overcoming her own addictions and demons in the process. In a brilliant stylistic feat Ruta has written a powerful inspiring compulsively readable and finally redemptive story about loving and leaving.. Praise for With or Without You. A luminous layered accomplishment.The New York Times Book ReviewA singular new coming-of-age memoir traces one girls twisting path up from mean streets (and parents) to the reflective life of a writer. . . . The burgeoning canon of literary memoir . . . begets another winner in Domenica Rutas searing With or Without You. . . . [A] gloriously gutsy memory-work.Elle. Stunning . . . comes across as a bleaker funnier R-rated version of The Glass Castle and marks the arrival of a blazing new voice in literature.Entertainment Weekly. Valiant and heartbreaking.Bust. Powerful . . . Ruta found an unconventional voice a scary good mixture of erudition and hardened street smarts. Her writing is also as they say in Danvers wicked funnythough in her case wicked is more an adjective than an intensifier. . . . [With or Without You] hums with jangled energy and bristles with sharp edges. . . . Ruta writes with unflinching honesty.Slate. Bracingly funny and poignant.The Boston Globe. Exceedingly powerful.Booklist