Destroy This House - by Amanda Uhle (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An ELLE Best Book of the Year

Shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing

"Incredible...riveting." --Dax Shepard, Armchair Expert podcast

For fans of The Glass Castle and The Liars' Club, a tender, heartbreaking, and hilarious memoir written with "unwavering affection" (ELLE) 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 this "iconic, only-in-America fable of desperate Midwestern dreamers" (Dave Eggers, bestselling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), 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.

Review Quotes

"Incredible...riveting."
--Dax Shepard, Armchair Expert podcast

"Astonishing...will reso­nate with anyone who has cared for a loved one in difficult circumstances...makes you laugh and wrenches your heart."
--Anne Bartlett, BookPage

"With riveting precision, candor, and wit, Uhle mixes emotionally complex memories with research into her parents' audacious schemes in a staggering feat of exorcism and reconciliation, a testament to loyalty, compassion, and love."
--Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

"Refreshing. The author shares at least one quality with her parents: she can spin a good yarn."
--Publishers Weekly

"An affecting portrait of a definitively dysfunctional family....Uhle's book will hit home with many readers."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A heartfelt memoir of a complicated but loving relationship."
--Library Journal

"What do you get when parents' pursuit of happiness collides with a child's need for stability? Astounding anecdotes, expired canned goods and hard-won insights on loyalty and love."
--Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

"The American Dream turns pathological in Amanda Uhle's beautiful memoir, Destroy This House, as Uhle reckons with her parents' snarled identities and confounding lifestyles. Poignant, wryly funny, and exquisitely written, Uhle masterfully depicts the confluence of ambition and greed, pioneerism and narcissism, love and pain. I devoured every sentence."
--Erika Krouse, author of Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation

"Destined to become a classic in the daughter-memoir genre, Destroy This House offers a tour of one couple's decaying, overdrawn world and the effect it had on their child, a devoted good-girl who did her best to help even as doing so began to compromise her own sanity. The author--a Gen-Xer whose indomitable spirit will be as familiar to readers as her cassette mixtapes--artfully excavates both her n'er-do-well parents' decaying home and her own furious compassion."
--Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Also a Poet

"An iconic, only-in-America fable of desperate Midwestern dreamers."
--Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

"In her vivid and bracing debut, journalist Amanda Uhle turns her investigative skills inward, peeling back the layers of deception that shaped her childhood. Blending sharp inquiry with personal insight, she confronts the half-truths of her past, unraveling the tangled web of her parents' grifts. Destroy This House is a wonderfully evocative exploration of family secrets and the ways they shaped this writer's life."
--Adrienne Brodeur, bestselling author of WILD GAME: My Mother, Her Love, and Me

"Confessional, vulnerable, honest, and scintillating. I loved every word."
--Hannah Pittard, author of If You Love It, Let It Kill You

"A fantastically entertaining tale of the most endearing grifters ever committed to print--who happen to be the author's parents."
--Isaac Fitzgerald, author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts

"Amanda Uhle's extraordinary memoir does what so few do, combining absolutely jaw-dropping material with the writerly skill to make it sing. I wanted to reread it immediately. It is a stunning debut you will recommend to everyone you know."
--Jennifer Traig, author of Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood

About the Author

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.