No One Gets to Fall Apart: A Memoir

In this spellbinding debut, Minx producer LaBrie reckons with her mother’s mental illness and her own relationship to work. Raised in Houston’s Third Ward by a loving but unstable and borderline schizophrenic mother, LaBrie escaped to college in Rhode Island on a scholarship. During her studies, however, she felt depressed and stuck, unable to finish a novel or shake off the rage instilled in her during her volatile childhood. She wrote poetry and short fiction, flitting listlessly between cities and readings throughout early adulthood, both propelled by and frightened of her writerly ambitions. After a series of ketamine therapy sessions and a particularly ridiculous reading at an indulgent art gallery, she realized that“following the literary world feels more and more like watching the fragile children of aristocrats gingerly explore their talents while their friends applaud and the world around them burns.” She decided to write a TV pilot, taking her first wobbly steps toward a career in Los Angeles; meanwhile, she began to unpack the effects on her of her mother’s behavior, and eventually ushered her into treatment. With unflinching honesty (“I am so terribly sick of cannibalizing my life for art”) and lyrical prose, LaBrie elegantly captures the grunt work of self-acceptance. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME. (Oct.)

Correction: A previous version of this review incorrectly stated that the author was born in Houston. She was born in San Francisco.