Standing Up

September 23, 2013
Grodin, the daughter of actor Charles Grodin, describes her life as a comedian and screenwriter in this giddy, raunchy memoir. Raised mostly by her eccentrically unstable mother in New York City on the Upper West Side, she often visited her father in L.A. when he was shooting pictures with fabulous co-stars such as Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange; while in high school, the author gravitated toward the pot-smoking crowd, and describes in various chapters the requisite cringing adolescent miseries regarding crushing friendships and the loss of her virginity. At Wesleyan she dug into drinking ("my new best friendâalcohol"), to the detriment of her health and career objectives, essentially needing her father to help her with housing and employment ("my dad, the SWAT team")âa pad in L.A. and a writing gig on It's a Living. The death of her mother from a brain tumor plunged Grodin back into substance-abuse, but eventually she resolved to strike out on her own as a stand-up comic, something, she writes, that she had dreamed of since first hearing Richard Pryor. Quirky, self-excoriating, tremendously human, Grodin is unafraid to tackle funny, sad, deeply painful issues of self-image and dependence.

October 15, 2013
The chronicles of a comedian's life. Stand-up comedian Grodin delves deeply into the fabric of her life to bring readers an honest examination of her roller-coaster existence. Experimenting with sex and drugs in high school turned into years of casual relationships and life lived for the high from alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and heroin ("Alcohol and other drugs had helped me feel like I didn't have any worries in the world. But heroin made me feel like I didn't have any world"). Grodin scrutinizes her codependent relationship with her mother and how she longed to be away from her. However, in times of great stress, the author wanted nothing more than to be wrapped in her mother's arms. When her mother was diagnosed with brain cancer, she writes, "I had always been like my mother's little husband, and now I moved into this role completely--the role I felt I'd been in training for my whole life--I became her caretaker....Though the circumstances were as dire as it gets, she was thrilled that we were together." Throughout all her ups and downs, the author's father, actor and talk show host Charles Grodin, was always there, with encouraging words, money, love and support, no questions asked. Multiple times, Grodin bottomed out, only to scrape herself together, facing her addictions, her weight issues and her fears. Eventually, Grodin entered a stable relationship, finally said yes to a second marriage proposal and began trying for a child, with heartbreaking results. Further insult was added when Grodin was diagnosed with cancer in the very thing she had always wished as a teen to rid herself of: her breast. Despite the harshness of her oftentimes self-induced problems, the author interjects her offbeat humor throughout the text, providing much-needed relief from the recitation of her pendulum of emotions. Sharp, witty, occasional black humor from a woman who has gone through hell and back and lived to tell the tale.

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November 1, 2013
At 42, Grodin, daughter of actor Charles Grodin, does what comes naturally: be funny. During one of the worst days of her lifeshe had finished a bout of brutal cancer treatments, she had gained a tremendous amount of weight, and her husband had just moved outshe finds joy making people laugh at the annual Kennedy gala in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Grodin riffs on what it is like to be a child of Hollywood and on life in Manhattan after her parents divorced. She name-drops the famous people in father's circle: a Woody Allen here, a Paul Simon there, a Jeff Bridges there. But this is mostly a memoir about self-doubt and insecurity as she recounts her battles with addictions to drugs and food. Adrift in the world, Grodin tries to find her way back to some sort of normality, first as a sitcom writer and eventually as a stand-up comic, something, she writes, I'd been wanting to do my whole life. A funny, sad, and ultimately triumphant tale of finding one's true self.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)