Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1)

Actor and country singer Kirke recalls growing up in a showbiz family in her raucous debut memoir-in-essays. Kirke, star of Mistress America and Mozart in the Jungle, recalls her girlhood in New York City’s West Village with her adulterous father, Simon, drummer for the band Bad Company; her volatile mother, Lorraine, a fashion designer who made Kirke beg Simon’s mistress to stop wrecking the family; and her older sister, Girls actor Jemima, who lurched through addictions and once seduced Kirke’s boyfriend. Kirke paints her relatives in a comedic, affectionate, and slightly scandalous light: her parents let her smoke as a minor, and the clan’s intense self-absorption left her feeling unloved. Later chapters follow Kirke through rocky relationships, Hollywood craziness, and a triumphant debut at the Grand Ole Opry. Replete with off-color celebrity cameos (“Kate Moss asked me where the toilet was”), Kirke’s narrative centers characters with too much money and ego, but she leavens the melodrama with a dashing wit—Kirke’s fraudulent stage résumé “named my fake characters things like ‘Jancy’ and ‘Water Gun Girl’.... I lied about my height and weight. I was a real actress.” The result is a deliriously entertaining recap of a misguided youth. (Jan.)