EASY STREET

The acclaimed Hollywood writer’s second memoir, following the well-reviewed Sin Bravely (2017).

Rowe opens by explaining that even though she is blessed with a wonderful husband, career, and home in LA, she is tormented by "a seething system of covetous rivalries and discontents" as well as an insidious form of OCD called looping, which involves being unable to stop repeating a word or phrase in one's head—e.g., “Auschwitz.” “As the repeating voice gains confidence and asserts itself more boldly—Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz—the panic that creeps through my skin does not compare itself to any other,” she writes. These troubles might have been enough to keep her busy, but then her kindhearted husband, Jimmy, made two new friends, a mother and daughter panhandling outside a restaurant, both of whom were huge fans of his work as a writer on The Golden Girls. After several months, the author joined one of the trio's monthly lunches; not long after, she found herself watching a Golden Girls marathon with the ladies in her home. While the mother, Sunny, was a likable jokester with fairly normal boundaries, her middle-aged daughter, Joanna, was not. She had an elementary school education, poor personal hygiene, and numerous odd tics, obsessions, and fixations—among them, her ever growing crush on Handsome Jim, as she often referred to Rowe’s husband. As Sunny and Joanna's situation took several turns for the worse, the author took on increasing responsibilities for them. Jimmy, on the other hand, had his hands full taking care of his wife. Rowe is a cleareyed, disarmingly honest, wonderfully funny narrator of this trial by fire, which almost seems to be a "test" of the sort the hero faces in a fable or a Bible story, ironically set in one of the most self-involved places on Earth.

If you've ever gotten in over your head trying to be a good person, get ready to wince, laugh, and scream. A great read.