3.5
Destroy This House
ByPublisher Description
“Incredible…riveting.” —Dax Shepard, Armchair Expert podcast
For fans of The Glass Castle and The Liars’ Club, a tender, heartbreaking, and hilarious memoir chronicling the challenges of growing up with a desperately scheming father, a mother plagued by an acute hoarding disorder, and parenting parents while seeking independence.
The Long family’s love was fierce, their lifestyle bizarre, and their deceptions countless. Once her parents were gone, Amanda Uhle realized she was closer to them than anyone else, yet she found herself utterly confounded by the lives they had led.
Amanda’s striving fashion designer mother and her charismatic wheeler-dealer father wove a complex life together that spanned ten different homes across five states over forty perplexing years. Throughout her childhood, as her mother’s hoarding disorder flourished and her father’s schemes crumbled, contradictions abounded. They bartered for dental surgery and drove their massive Lincoln Town Car to the food bank. When financial ruin struck, they abandoned their repossessed mansion for humble parish housing, and Amanda’s father became a preacher. They swung between being filthy rich and dirt poor, devious and virtuous, lonely and loved, fake and real.
In Destroy This House, Amanda sets out to document her parents’ unbelievable exploits and her own hard-won escape into independence. With humor and tenderness, Uhle has crafted a heartfelt and utterly unique memoir, capturing the raucousness, pain, joy, and ultimately, the boundless love that exists between all parents and children.
For fans of The Glass Castle and The Liars’ Club, a tender, heartbreaking, and hilarious memoir chronicling the challenges of growing up with a desperately scheming father, a mother plagued by an acute hoarding disorder, and parenting parents while seeking independence.
The Long family’s love was fierce, their lifestyle bizarre, and their deceptions countless. Once her parents were gone, Amanda Uhle realized she was closer to them than anyone else, yet she found herself utterly confounded by the lives they had led.
Amanda’s striving fashion designer mother and her charismatic wheeler-dealer father wove a complex life together that spanned ten different homes across five states over forty perplexing years. Throughout her childhood, as her mother’s hoarding disorder flourished and her father’s schemes crumbled, contradictions abounded. They bartered for dental surgery and drove their massive Lincoln Town Car to the food bank. When financial ruin struck, they abandoned their repossessed mansion for humble parish housing, and Amanda’s father became a preacher. They swung between being filthy rich and dirt poor, devious and virtuous, lonely and loved, fake and real.
In Destroy This House, Amanda sets out to document her parents’ unbelievable exploits and her own hard-won escape into independence. With humor and tenderness, Uhle has crafted a heartfelt and utterly unique memoir, capturing the raucousness, pain, joy, and ultimately, the boundless love that exists between all parents and children.
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3.5
Sara Sunderman
Created 5 days agoShare
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“This was super interesting and emotionally involving. Amanda’s childhood was a wild ride and it’s sad to see that it didn’t really get better until both of her parents were deceased. It was interesting to step into a childhood so different from my own and made me thankful for the parents I have.”
✨ Amanda S. ✨
Created 9 days agoShare
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“This book is written by a friend of a friend (more specifically, my favorite coworker knows the author, and I have met the author). I had the opportunity to hear Amanda Uhle talk about her book during her press tour for it, and part of me wishes I didn’t know so many intimate details about it before diving into it. The things I should’ve been surprised by, I wasn’t, and that’s just because I already knew what to expect. Which means there were moments that dragged or lulled for me, and I wonder if it’s because I already knew the info. But the last 75ish pages had me in a vice grip. As did the epilogue and even the acknowledgements (I’m a sucker for them). I love memoir, and this one was solid.”
Amy Bennett
Created 23 days agoShare
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Marybeth
Created 29 days agoShare
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Natalie Vanoosten
Created about 1 month agoShare
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About Amanda Uhle
Amanda Uhle writes about culture, politics, and civil rights for The Washington Post, POLITICO, The Boston Globe, and Newsweek. Uhle is coeditor of the I, Witness series of first-person stories by youth activists, former director of the 826michigan youth writing and tutoring program, and cofounder, with Dave Eggers, of the International Congress of Youth Voices. Their work with youth writing organizations worldwide is documented in Unnecessarily Beautiful Spaces for Young Minds on Fire. Uhle is the publisher and executive director of McSweeney’s, an independent nonprofit publisher of distinctive books and magazines.
Other books by Amanda Uhle
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