Remarkable . . . A timeless tale of surviving emotional neglect and mental illness; but it is also the story of a singular household filled with complex and exceptional artists, and the author’s experience of inheriting their prodigious legacy. . . . Raw, filled with sorrow, dark humor and sharp observation.”—New York Times Book Review
“An intense but finely written book in the manner of classic coming-of-age memoirs like The Bell Jar.”—Vogue
“Accessible and highly intelligent . . . The book sets a remarkably hopeful tone and, at its end, leaves the reader to understand that loving one’s life—no matter how scarring, shameful, or terrifying, is possible.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Extraordinary, relatable, beautiful . . . The do-or-die question of memoir—do we care?—is answered in the form of a direct pipeline to the reader's heart.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Extraordinary.”—Sarah Jessica Parker
“The writing is pure elegance.”—Lisa Taddeo
“Mind-blowing!”—Lena Dunham
Gorgeous, timeless, and wise.—Amanda Montell, author of Cultish
“An impressive feat of writing.”—The Telegraph
“Everything/Nothing/Someone will stay in your mind for a long time.”—Real Simple
“A story of immense bravery and resilience. It is clear, too, that this book was written by an exceptional human being, one with a remarkable capacity for forgiveness and a keen ability to see ‘love hidden in the heart of our failings and misfortunes.’”—Washington Post
“Wild, dark, riveting . . . Everything/Nothing/Someone is held together, even elevated, by the force of Carrière’s honesty, which lives in her prose.”—Chapter 16
“Spare and direct, with flashes of Didionesque elegance . . . The writing of this book and the presentation of Carrière’s life is brutal and honest and funny and shocking. . . . One of the most compelling first-person memoirs I’ve read in a long time.”—Bret Easton Ellis, Bret Easton Ellis Podcast
“Creatively exceptional . . . This isn’t only about Carrière’s life. It’s also about how people make art and build family, how philosophy . . . intersects with lived experience, and how people try and fail to connect.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Carrière’s surgically precise prose compresses her broken-glass experiences into hard diamond truths about family trauma and the mental health industry. This brutal, illuminating account reads like a contemporary Girl, Interrupted.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A spellbinding memoir.”—Kirkus (starred review)
“I don’t know which is more stunning: the triumph of this life, or the triumph of this beautiful book. Or perhaps they are one and the same. Out of the ashes of a childhood that may have appeared shiny on its surface but was unnerving and profoundly lonely, Alice Carrière has made art. Everything/Nothing/Someone is a master class in memoir.”—Dani Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of Inheritance
“Propulsive, intense, moving, and breathtakingly honest, this searing memoir about family ties, trampled boundaries, and mental illness is completely unforgettable. What a writer!”—Molly Shannon, New York Times bestselling author of Hello, Molly
“This unsparing memoir reveals Alice Carrière’s extraordinary courage, her brilliance, her willingness to forgive, and her understanding that you hold your life on the condition that you will struggle hard in your search for an unmistakable self.”—Susanna Moore, author of Miss Aluminum
“I read this brilliant book in one mad gulp. The prose is like a fever dream; Alice Carrière is an amazing writer. What a story—from start to finish.”—Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man
★ 2023-05-03
A memoir of mental illness from the daughter of actor Mathieu Carrière and artist Jennifer Bartlett.
Alice Carrière’s childhood was underscored by the wealth, power, and notoriety of her parents along with the idiosyncrasies and aloofness that these markers often confer. In her literary debut, she establishes the push and pull of her mother, father, and beloved Nanny, “the British governess paid to raise me,” a motherly figure “who could be fired and disappear at any moment.” Each struggled with their own backgrounds of trauma, from indoctrination in perverse cultural movements to up-close encounters with suicide. The inheritance of these scars—and the attendant distance and inappropriateness—contributed to the author’s mental illness, which included self-harm, first inflicted at age 7. “With a tiny, shiny blade I learned I could unlock a doorway that led to a place that was entirely my own, even if I could only stay there for a moment within those seconds of pain,” she recalls. Throughout this visceral text, the author propels readers forward with the gut-wrenching descriptions of her struggles and how they were exacerbated by the lack of a recognizable support system. Meanwhile, she artfully establishes an equally disturbing undercurrent: the sucker punch of egregious malpractice to which she was subjected by a series of doctors who overprescribed a number of powerful drugs and mismanaged therapy sessions. It can be difficult to ignore the advantages of Carrière’s privilege—e.g., lengthy stays at expensive inpatient facilities, the ability to drop in and out of elite universities—but her artistic prowess and determination to unearth and interpret the true narrative arc of her life and healing shine through. “Things only became real when they were turned into language,” she writes, and “that language was often the only thing left when that reality fell apart.” This book is the exemplification of that ideal, rendering real and poignant her experience—both material and interior—in stunning prose.
A spellbinding memoir.