Destroy This House: A Memoir

Droll details about growing up with charismatic yet unstable parents animate McSweeney’s publisher Uhle’s enjoyable debut. “The Longs,” Uhle writes, “were masters of reinvention,” who moved frequently and burned through careers as their finances boomed and busted. Her father, Steve, invented a fast-selling soap dispenser in the 1980s, then settled the family in a lavish Long Island mansion. When his next big idea—an “AIDS-resistant toilet seat”—fizzled, the family downsized, and Steve decided to become a pastor despite having no background in religion. As the ground kept shifting, Uhle chafed at her mom’s obsessive hoarding and her father’s hucksterism, and had recurring dreams of obliterating their crowded house. Her account resists excessive psychologizing: though Uhle stresses the trials of having to parent her parents, her tone throughout remains more bewildered than melancholy. Some readers may wish she was more curious about the source of her parents’ dysfunctions, but Uhle’s preference for cockeyed portraiture in place of warmed-over inherited trauma tropes is refreshing. The author shares at least one quality with her parents: she can spin a good yarn. Agent: Julie Stevenson, Massie McQuilkin & Altman. (Aug.)