Never Simple

by Liz Scheier, Amy Landon (Read by)

Overview

Liz Scheier’s darkly funny and touching memoir—with shades of Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle and Mira Bartók’s The Memory Palace—of growing up in ’90s Manhattan with a brilliant, mendacious single mother

Scheier’s mother Judith was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—a violent and abusive liar whose hold on reality was shaky at best. On an uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room to tell her two important things: one, she had been married for most of Scheier’s life to a man she’d never heard of, and two, the man she’d told Scheier was her father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up. Those two big lies were the start, but not the end; it took dozens of smaller lies to support them, and by the time she was done she had built a farcical, half-true life for the two of them, from fake social security number to fabricated husband.

One hot July day twenty years later, Scheier receives a voicemail from Adult Protective Services, reporting that Judith has stopped paying rent and is refusing all offers of assistance. That call is the start of a shocking journey that takes the Scheiers, mother and daughter, deep into the cascading effects of decades of lies and deception.

Never Simple is the story of learning to survive—and, finally, trying to save—a complicated parent, as feared as she is loved, and as self-destructive as she is adoring.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250840349
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	03/01/2022
Product dimensions:	1.00(w) x 1.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Liz Scheier is a former Penguin Random House editor who worked in publishing and content development for many years, including at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. She writes book reviews and feature articles for Publishers Weekly. She is now a product developer living in Washington, D.C., with her husband, two small children, and an ill-behaved cat. Never Simple is her first book.

Table of Contents

Preface: Liars xiii

1 The Man Who Wasn't There 1

2 Yorkville on My Mind 6

3 The Kids Are Alright 19

4 That's Mow the Light Gets In 40

5 Launched 56

6 Selling for Scrap 79

7 Breaking It Off 90

8 Switching Teams 114

9 Father Figure 128

10 Hitched 149

11 That's Why They Call It Labor 158

12 A Room Full of Men 179

13 The Apple and the Tree 186

14 Gimme Shelter 210

15 Detritus 217

16 Mermaid Manor 229

17 Checking In 233

18 I Lift Up My Eyes 247

Acknowledgments 269

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/10/2022

Scheier, a PW contributor, debuts with a stunning and generous account of living with her mother’s mental illness. “Telling exorbitant lies was easier in the 80s,” she recounts of her New York City childhood. “There was no internet, no way to track down the clues.” And lie her mother, Judith, did—endlessly: about the identity of Scheier’s father; her marital status; and about her daughter’s birth certificate (born at home, Scheier didn’t have one). It wasn’t until college that Scheier found out her mother was a master of deception, a revelation followed by another explosive discovery—that Judith suffered from borderline personality disorder. As Scheier writes, “People suffering from borderline personality disorder live in a world on fire.” In crisp and commanding prose, she traces how, until her mother’s death in 2019, that fire swept through her own life—her childhood enduring Judith’s “all-consuming wrath,” her own suicide attempts as a teen, later selling her eggs to keep her aging mother from becoming homeless. Yet, strikingly, compassion trumps anger: “I loved her smoky cackle and her jokes... her whole-body storytelling,” she writes. “Now that I have my own children, I see how much of her best my mother did.” Readers will find it hard to part with this one. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

March 2022 Indie Next Pick
The New York Times Book Review’s “11 New Books We Recommend This Week,” 3/10/22
People’s Picks in People Magazine
Publishers Weekly “Books of the Week” Pick, 2/28/22
Featured on B&N Reads, “Top 10 Favorite eBooks This Year (So Far)”

“This powerful, conversational and — above all — honest memoir shakes hard truths out of the family tree.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“‘You can still love someone who has caused you a lot of harm,’ Scheier writes. Never Simple helped me understand the truth behind this statement — and the guts it takes to say it… Scheier approaches her childhood like a detective…as she points out the cracks between the fiction she was raised with and the facts she pieced together on her own…By the time I reached the end, I was grateful that Scheier had weathered the storm.”
—The New York Times, Group Text column

“Never Simple shows a child and young adult who, while living in chaos, has a maturity and wisdom that most adults don’t possess. As a result, our response is more profound awe than merely a sympathetic aww… Some [readers] will see themselves while others will empathize. But in the end, Never Simple reminds every reader that no matter who we are and where we come from, life is never simple.”
—USA Today

“An incredible book. I highly recommend Never Simple. It's hilarious, poignant, witty, and brutally honest. I loved it to pieces.”
—Mira Bartók, author of The Memory Palace

“Scheier…debuts with a stunning and generous account of living with her mother’s mental illness…Readers will find it hard to part with this one.”
—Publishers Weekly, *starred*

“[A] jaw-dropping story…that will spark necessary conversation about transparency, mental health, abuse, addiction, housing, parenthood, egg donation, elder care, but also questions about love, sexuality, friendship, obligation, responsibility, devotion, and freedom. While this sounds like one kitchen sink of a book, what Scheier does is reveal the way these issues so often are impossible to untangle from one another.”
—Observer

“[Never Simple] blends dark humor with heartache…[Scheier’s] rich imagery and engaging prose will keep readers turning the pages…A brave exploration of a difficult but forever-connected mother-daughter relationship. Scheier’s memoir will appeal to many, thanks to its wit, unraveling mystery, and honesty.”
—Library Journal

“[In this] tense and heart-rending story…Scheier is sometimes as sardonic as her mother, as well as funny and frequently clever…Never Simple writhes with the sorrow and guilt only a deep and complicated love can arouse.”
—BookPage

“Scheier’s debut is heartbreaking and compelling. The writing is insightful and candid, and the style is crisp and frank, threaded with both an aching sorrow and a droll perspective…Scheier sets her own course here. Never Simple is a worthwhile contribution to the library of stories about dysfunctional families, survival and compassion.”
—Bookreporter

“Sometimes raw and other times wry, Scheier recounts the combinations of adventure and abuse, love and terror her mother, Judith, engendered… Ultimately, Scheier reconciles these two contradictory truths of her mother’s persona. Scheier’s final pages are a moving confession of learning how to love her own children the ‘correct’ amount without subjecting them to the damaging extremes of a mother’s love.”
—Booklist

“[In this] touching memoir…Scheier illustrates how a child can not only heal from trauma, but evolve into forgiveness…[P]oignant, often horrific and darkly funny.”
—Shelf Awareness

“Liz Scheier’s beautiful book is a testament to the undeniable, indestructible love between a mother and a daughter. In telling her story she brings enormous sympathy to an exceedingly complicated relationship, and thus a clearer understanding for all of us with mothers. It’s a meditation on the subject of how much fear and dread can be tolerated by a loving heart. I adored it.”
—Isaac Mizrahi

“The complexities of a mother/daughter relationship are laid bare in this darkly funny, and utterly shattering memoir. Liz Scheier writes with shocking beauty and grace, never once turning her back on the truth. Never Simple is a brilliant, triumphant debut by a writer of significant literary talent.”
—Augusten Burroughs, author of Running With Scissors and Toil & Trouble

“Possibly the most brilliant, evocative, devastating memoir of what it is like to be the daughter of a mother with Borderline Personality Disorder, Liz Scheier’s story is also one of resilience and compassion. The questions it asks are ones that every surviving adult child of a profoundly mentally ill parent grapples with: how strong is the maternal thread that enables the survivor to care for an abusive mother even when they become a danger to their world and everyone in it? Is it possible for those left behind to ever heal? Staggering, at turns horrifying and life-giving, Never Simple left me gasping for breath.”
—Elissa Altman, author of Motherland

“A riveting and poignant memoir of lies, compassion, and discovery. I couldn't put it down.”
—Jenny Lawson, New York Times bestselling author of Broken, Furiously Happy, and Let's Pretend This Never Happened

“[Never Simple] recounts an improbably complicated life courtesy of an eccentric, mentally ill mother…[D]ark humor…abounds throughout the narrative…[D]rama on every page, punctuated by shrewd wit.”
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

02/01/2022

Scheier steps away from her work in editing and publishing to release her own memoir that blends dark humor with heartache. The work seems to come from Scheier's need to reflect upon and accept her relationship with an overbearing mother, who haunted every developmental stage of the author's life. How does one love and fear the person they are closest to?, Scheier asks. Her rich imagery and engaging prose will keep readers turning the pages as she recounts growing up in 1990s Manhattan with a mother who had borderline personality disorder. Scheier shares her and her mother's stories with care and reflects on her life as a child and now, as a parent. Readers who have lived in New York City, are members of Generation X, or grew up in an environment tinged with mental illness will find much to relate to in this memoir; those who are intrigued by family secrets will want to keep up with the unknown diagnoses and identities that unravel within. VERDICT A brave exploration of a difficult but forever-connected mother-daughter relationship. Scheier's memoir will appeal to many, thanks to its wit, unraveling mystery, and honesty.—Kelly Karst

Library Journal

2021-12-14
A former Random House editor and content developer recounts an improbably complicated life courtesy of an eccentric, mentally ill mother.

Scheier’s mother, Judith, was a font of mystery and mistruths. Early on, the author recounts the time she wanted to enroll in driver’s education and needed her birth certificate. “I never filed a record of your birth at all,” said Judith. “Why not?” Replied Judith, “I was married when you were born. But not to your father.” There are multiple misdirections in this simple exchange, enough to set Scheier, ever curious, to playing the role of detective. Her father supposedly died before she was born, but there was much more to it than all that. “Telling exorbitant lies was easier in the ’80s,” writes the author, and were there a lot of them—e.g., the fake Social Security number Judith got for her daughter or how she was able to live in “a luxury neighborhood in one of the most expensive cities on earth for decades without working over a single day.” Scheier sought escape, at one point attempting suicide (“I was irretrievably broken. Entirely unfixable”). In a moment of dark humor, which abounds throughout the narrative, she writes that after taking way too many pills of various kinds, she wound up vomiting for hours in the bathroom, reading her English homework—Steinbeck’s The Pearl—“between heaves.” Later, she endured a “nearly sexless relationship for the better part of a decade,” a union that ended with her partner’s infidelity. “The next few weeks looked like a movie montage of a recent breakup,” she writes, “preferably with myself played by Kristen Wiig.” Eventually, Scheier found new love and motherhood, in between episodes of which she continued to investigate the identity of her father and endured a mother who, though sinking into dementia, still had enough tricks up her sleeve to land the author in an eviction lawsuit, with no end to the mishegoss.

A fraught and sometimes overwrought drama on every page, punctuated by shrewd wit.

Kirkus Reviews