Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤'s Reviews > Small Fry: A Memoir

I love to read memoirs. I do not love to read memoirs in which the author is either begging for pity or bragging. Unfortunately, in Small Fry Lisa Brennan-Jobs does both. She writes very well, descriptively, and engagingly; otherwise, I would not have been able to stomach this book at all. She held my attention even whilst she annoyed the hell out of me.

Small Fry is about Lisa's childhood and her relationship with her sometimes-there/sometimes-not-there father, Steve Jobs. Nothing shocking that he wasn't Father of the Year material. He could be emotionally distant and awkward and wasn't always around when she was young. However, he did not seem to be the monster she often wants us to think he was. At least to me, her childhood seemed rather normal and easy, even enviable, nothing to feel sorry for her about. OK, it's not fun to worry that maybe your father doesn't love you, and I feel compassion for the child she was that she often didn't feel loved and cared about by him. However, she was not physically or sexually abused, was loved by her parents, was never homeless, didn't lack medical care, didn't go to bed hungry or go without shoes, clothes, etc. Was her childhood perfect? No, I'm sure it wasn't. However, it did not sound traumatic or dangerous or even particularly sad, and her self-pity is more than irritating, it's nauseating. If she was still a child, I'd feel sorry for her. Somewhat. Maybe. Because I'm sure it's tough being a kid no matter what your childhood is like and never knowing how attentive her father would be must have been confusing and painful at times. However, as an adult, Ms. Brennan-Jobs need to look around her, maybe pick up one of many other memoirs, and realize that she's not the only one who wasn't happy 100% of the time as a child. She actually had a quite nice childhood for the most part, from my vantage point. In my opinion, Lisa comes across as a poor-me-rich girl. Were her parents perfect? No, but whose parents are? Did they love her? Yes, though I can understand how she would feel unloved at times by her father when she was a child. For that alone I feel compassion for the child she was.

However, I just can't take people who want to always make themselves a victim to gain pity and attention. I'm very compassionate, but my empathy wears thin when I feel I'm being manipulated into giving it. That's what I felt from this book, that I was being manipulated.. I also feel like she was simultaneously bragging about her father being Steve Jobs (which, actually, is the only thing in this book that makes her stand out from thousands of other people, the fact that she had a famous and rich father) and about the name brand clothing he bought her (though she also complained that he didn't buy her as many clothes as she'd liked to have had because he was so, so mean to her).



Also proof he was a monster -- she sometimes had to babysit her brother AND she had to do the dishes -- by hand !!!! Their dishwasher was broken and she had to do the dishes. By hand. Poor, poor girl. Wow. I was flummoxed when I read that! I suppose with everything up to that point, it shouldn't have shocked me, but it did. Another instance of her whining that made my jaw drop open, was that when she visited her mother, her father wouldn't drive her --- it was 4 blocks away and she was a teenager! Lisa comes across as very selfish and self-centred, very full of herself, and possessing an extreme sense of entitlement. She really does need to look around and see what many people around the world suffer on a daily basis. She could start by reading any number of memoirs, or even just watching the news. I find it abhorrent that she expects people to feel sorry for her when many people would gladly fill her shoes, and she is totally ignorant of that fact.

Maybe some people will enjoy this book; as I said above, it is written very well, though there is not much remarkable in it and it is monotonous in places. She writes well and for that alone I give this 2 stars. Otherwise it would have gone on the abandoned shelf.

"It was hard to understand why someone who had enough money would create a sense of scarcity, why he wouldn't lavish us with it."

And that, my friends, seems to be the issue.... she didn't get as much as she wanted growing up or as an adult. I can't help but being left with the feeling that she's unhappy with the multi-millions he left her, thinking she deserved more, and this book is her middle finger thrust at his grave. Grow up, Lisa.