WILD WEST VILLAGE

An actress/singer-songwriter muses on surviving her fierce, feral, fast-living family.

Kirke grew up the youngest daughter of a rock musician father and a clothing designer mother. Rife with bohemian disarray, their New York City home—which recalled “an expensive French brothel”—attracted stars like David Bowie, who once declined an offer to use one of her sister’s hands as an ashtray, and Courtney Love, who set fire to their house during a long stay. Despite her access to privilege, wealth, and deliriously outrageous parties where she danced in “oversize antique underwear,” Kirke secretly yearned for normalcy and for respect from her beautiful elder sisters who avoided or ignored her unless she had something they wanted. She discovered acting as a preteen and threw herself into comically inappropriate roles like child prostitutes and “a slew of other promiscuous women,” all with the goal of gaining the accolades that always seemed to go to her siblings. Later, she landed roles in small indie films, then the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, but those successes always seemed overshadowed by those of other family members. Still searching for her artistic identity, she went to a songwriting retreat where she met a country music producer she called the Cowboy, who embodied “both the freedom and stability I’d long craved.” When every song she wrote after that “came out country,” Kirke realized not only that she loved the Cowboy enough to move to Nashville, but also that country music could help her render everything, including the most complex feelings, “perfectly simple.” This memoir-in-essays will appeal to anyone who enjoys unforgettable characters and fearless storytelling from a writer unafraid to face down her own demons.

A funny, raw, and painful book about a woman’s chaotic, thoroughly individual path to coming into her own.