THIS WILL BE FUNNY LATER

Roseanne Barr’s daughter recounts living with the glamour and chaos of her mother’s stardom.

Before her mother became famous, Pentland lived a blue-collar suburban life in Denver with her eccentric yet intact family. “Aside from being half-naked and feral,” she writes, “we were also being raised part atheist, part Jewish, and part Wiccan, with a touch of paganism and voodoo thrown in.” She watched as her homemaker-turned-waitress mother found unexpected acclaim in Denver’s alternative comedy club scene and then moved to Los Angeles to do stand-up. Pentland navigated an increasingly unstable home life as well as her own struggles with overeating and acting out while her mother built a career. Too busy to attend to her daughter, Barr hired a series of live-in counselors, private chefs, and hypnotherapists and sent her to “Fat Camp.” The author’s childhood also brought with it scrutiny from the media and seemingly everyone around her. In adolescence, she went through a series of psychiatric hospitals, wilderness-based “self-improvement” camps, and Synanon-affiliated schools with mandatory therapy sessions that were “borderline abusive and violent.” Barr’s highly publicized divorce from Pentland’s father, relationship with “abusive addict” Tom Arnold, and midlife pregnancy by her bodyguard only added to the turbulence. The author eventually met and married a set dresser whose steady presence brought balance to her tumultuous world. Yet even after she started the family she always wanted, her life continued to intersect with her mother’s. When Barr bought a ranch in Hawaii, Pentland and her husband moved in as caretakers. Several false starts later, the author and her husband finally began an island farm life, finally free of Hollywood. This complex, scathingly funny memoir about dealing with the toxic glow of fame offers an intimate look at a woman’s struggle to shape a life on her own terms. Pentland also provides a unique angle on the cult of celebrity and how its effects ripple out far beyond just the celebrity.

A mordantly poignant memoir of finding oneself amid hectic external forces.