In her raw account of love gone wrong, L.A. journalist Resnick (Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick
) describes her descent into self-debasement. Resnick's lifelong attraction to unsuitable men—unavailable, abusive and emotionally damaged—hit a perilous stage by the time she reached her early 40s and her last boyfriend, Spencer, who had seemed the “perfect victim to make [her] dreams come true,” broke into her house and wrecked her computer. Alternating with her litany of awful relationships—from the scarily egotistical ex-con painter Eddie to the various men who refused to have a baby with her—Resnick delineates her appalling, loveless childhood and the neglect by her hard-drinking mother, who lost custody of her and her younger brother when Resnick was 12. Subsequently, the teenager bounced around foster homes because she was not welcome in the new household of her father, remarried to an Orthodox Jew with four new children of his own. Resnick's memoir is a desperate, self-excoriating attempt to break the victim cycle first taught to her expertly by her mother, “the original love junkie”; engender a tenderness for her rather indifferent father; and mend the estrangement from her brother. Most important in terms of survival in this painfully honest memoir, Resnick found the wherewithal through a support group to heal and reground herself. (Dec.)
