The Sky Isn't Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life | Felicia Sullivan

The Sky Isn't Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life | Felicia Sullivan | Shades of Gray

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The Sky Isn't Visi...

	The Sky Isn't Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life Felicia Sullivan Algonquin Books, 2008 - 255 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Felicia Sullivan's volatile, beautiful, deceitful, drug-addicted mother disappeared on the night Sullivan graduated from college, and has not been seen or heard from in the ten years since. Sullivan, who grew up on the tough streets of Brooklyn in the 1980s, now looks back on her childhood?lived among drug dealers, users, and substitute fathers. Sullivan became her mother's keeper, taking her to the hospital when she overdosed, withstanding her narcissistic rages, succumbing to the abuse or indifference of so-called stepfathers, and always wondering why her mother would never reveal the truth about the father she'd never met.

Ashamed of her past, Sullivan invented a persona to show the world. Yet despite her Ivy League education and numerous accomplishments, she, like her mother, eventually succumbed to alcohol and drug abuse. She wrote The Sky Isn't Visible from Here, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, when she realized it was time to kill her own creation.

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Bold and Beautiful

I haven't finished a book this quickly since I was twelve and read Beverly Cleary by the week. THE SKY ISN'T VISIBLE will hold you by the throat. It is gripping and tragic--making it that much more hopeful in the end. It takes a bold and talented writer to tell a disturbing story in such an endearing way.

Shades of Gray

In her book about her childhood with an abusive and neglectful drug-addicted mother, Sullivan does not only paint in black and white. There are no absolutes. Her mother is not horribly evil all the time--no, sometimes she knits and makes lunches. Unfortunately the times that she locks herself in a bedroom, or spends food money on drugs, or exposes her daughter to an abusive boyfriend are far more frequent.

Sullivan hurts, and tries to hide for most of her young adult life, but as we've come to expect in memoir, she heals as well. Thanks to a supporting cast of her "father," (who she had the good fortune to pick herself), friends old and new, and most of all the self she wants to be, she kicks her own drug and alcohol addictions.

I read memoir to remind myself about what is inside the people we see each day. Most have overcome something or are struggling with something at the moment. Sullivan's story makes us think and reminds us of the power of hope, but also not to paint everyone's past with the same brush.

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unique perspective

a poignant and stirring account of a woman's highly interesting life. The story is imbued with complex psychological dramas and philosophical musings that offer much to the generation of people who grew up in the eighties and nineties. She maintains a sense of humor and literary creativity throughout the book. I was intrigued, disturbed, humored and enlightened by this unique and intelligent book of discovery.

I look forward to checking out the other works by this talented author.

Heartbreaking

I found her story gut wrenching and mesmerizing. Sullivan crafts an absorbing memoir from painful experiences. She writes beautifully.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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