In this darkly humorous memoir-in-essays singer-songwriter Lola Kirke untangles an
extraordinary upbringing in a family of eccentric messy artists and how a girl from the big
city went a little bit country. Born into a dynastic creative family Lola Kirke grew up
around people who maintained glamorous veneers while turbulence rocked their inner worlds. The
youngest daughter of a British rock star and socialite designer Lola and her siblings
(including actress Jemima and celebrity doula Domino) spent their childhoods in a sprawling
West Village brownstone which thanks to the eclectic stylings of its matriarch became the
talk of the City and was visited by the likes of Courtney Love and David Bowie. But behind the
enviable exterior of wealth and coolness was a family in disarray. Her parents’ marriage
was characterized by addiction and affairs. Her sisters’ youths marked by their own stints in
rehab and oriented around a relentless pursuit of beauty idealized by their mother. To make
sense of all the madness young Lola turned to chocolate masturbation marijuana and last but
not least the distant sounds of country music where singers like Patsy Cline Loretta Lynn
and Gram Parsons helped her see that the worst things in life are fine if you can make them
rhyme. That women can be complicated. And that men sometimes beg for forgiveness. But before
heading south to make music herself Lola went west to Los Angeles landing with a
career-launching role in Gone Girl that led to starring alongside Greta Gerwig in Mistress
America and Gael Garcia Bernal for four seasons on the Golden Globe–winning Mozart in the
Jungle . But increasingly dubious of an artistic life lived in only one lane Lola eventually
left LA for Nashville reconciling the future she was building with the chaotic past she was
recalling by writing her own country songs. After a lifetime of trying to fit in with her
family and stand out in the world she finally realized what she really needed was just to be
herself—contradictions and all. Darkly funny high spirited and just a little bit country
this is the story of a young woman trying to be someone else while secretly learning to become
herself as well as the story of a family that in Lola’s own words puts the “fun” in
dysfunctional.
