With or Without You

by Domenica Ruta

Domenica Ruta grew up in Danvers, Massachusetts, in a ramshackle, rundown, trash-filled house with her mother, a drug dealer and user who raised Domenica on a steady diet of Oxycontin. Growing up, Domenica knew she didn't fit in-she was far smarter and worse dressed than everyone else she knew, and she clearly had the most flamboyant mother of anyone in town-but she found solace in writing and reading. As she grew older, though, and as her mother's behavior grew increasingly outrageous and her home life increasingly untenable, Domenica fled Danvers only to become ensnared by the demons of addiction.

A thoroughly textured and masterfully written book, layered with wildly colorful characters, a biting sense of humor, and penetrating, deeply sympathetic insights, With or Without You finally ends with Domenica's increasing awareness that she must leave the life she grew up with in order to survive.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Book Club, Biography, Biography Memoir, Addiction, Audiobook

224 pages, Hardcover

First published February 26, 2013

About the author

Domenica Ruta was born and raised in Danvers, Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. She was a finalist for the Keene Prize for Literature and has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, Jentel, and Hedgebrook.

Reviews

[Juniper · Rating 3 out of 5]

so, i think there's a fine line to the art of a good memoir. especially from a writer who is not very well-known. on one side: a writer who has had experiences that suck and emerges triumphant (or some reasonable facsimile thereof). on the other side: a story driven by ego. rather than just having to get a story out of them, an ego-driven memoir is almost glad in it's 'look how awful this was for me'. 'i win at worst life ever.' and that's tough to read. there's actually a moment in the book when, while working on her MFA and out drinking with classmates, they compete over worst life ever. ruta notes: who wants to win that game? no one. but she kinda does. it wasn't until the very last page that my decision on how i felt about this story settled over me. i didn't like it. but that's more a stylistic issue and totally not a reflection on the sucktastic life ruta had. what redeemed the story - her admission of egotism. i was glad it was there.

it's a tough and sad story, to be sure, but i couldn't get into a good rhythm with the read. it's jumpy. the flow is off-putting but i am aware this could be the point given the subject matter. but i recently read Drunk Mom: A Memoir - it's a far superior memoir. i was completely absorbed and engaged in Jowita Bydlowska's story. With or Without You just didn't pull me in in the same way and while the book ended up being 'fine', it wasn't impactful in any meaningful way. i have huge empathy for Domenica Ruta and thank darwin she is so damn smart (taught herself russian cryllic in grade four? hello!!). her smarts gave her school opportunities that got her out of her wretched home environments. but at the end, i was left wondering what was the point of the book? there's so many books flooding the 'misery lit' nonfiction market. each tale worse than the one before it. but to me, there still needs to be a purpose beyond 'i survived'. (which is a totally huge deal - please don't get me wrong. i realize that.) it's just that another tale of 'i survived' makes it no more distinct than any other book in this genre.

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Domenica Ruta grew up with an unstable single mother named Kathi who, although she was at times a successful local businesswoman and Harvard Extension student, was also a slacker junkie whose house eventually got condemned and who was so thrilled when Domenica “finally” got high for the first time that she gave her a bag of pot (the “good stuff”) for Christmas every year thereafter (although Kathi herself went in for much harder stuff). She was the kind of mother who said “Would it kill you to show a little leg?” when her daughter was trying to figure out what to wear for a tour of a prestigious boarding school. And who said “What? We’re in France, for Christ’s sake!” when her daughter caught her snorting crushed OxyContin tablets on a bench at the Louvre. And who said “He’s such a good guy. And I owe him a lot of money right now, so I’m not exactly in a position to argue. Okay?” when her daughter tried to tell her she’d been molested by an uncle.

If she was your mother, you’d write a memoir about her too—once you’d sobered up yourself.

It must be said, this book is flawed, flawed, flawed. The early parts of the book are somehow a bit dull despite the subject matter. Some of the writing is beautiful, but some of it is callow. Ruta tells her story in a nonlinear fashion, which is fine in principle, but in this particular case it makes things muddled. Mostly, though, it feels like she just doesn’t have enough distance from the story to really understand it yet herself, to know what’s ultimately significant and what isn’t. She wrote this book with only a year or two of sobriety under her own belt and had (understandably) cut off contact with her mother a few years before that, and it’s hard not to think that she doesn’t yet know how both of those things will inform her life story even in the next few years, much less decades. The publisher has compared this book to The Liars’ Club and The Glass Castle, and it also has many parallels to Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, but it’s nowhere near as fully realized as any of those memoirs. I can understand why, as a writer, Ruta had to tell this story. But I also feel like the story hasn’t fully played out yet.

My feelings about reading this book are confusing to me. It kept my attention and I certainly didn’t dread going back to it, but at the same time I couldn’t wait to be done. It was uncomfortable. It got into my system, like a virus. Reading it was kind of a visceral experience—there is no emotion recalled in tranquility here. If we want to know what Ruta’s life has been like so far, here is what it’s been like. But if we want to know how she truly thinks and feels about it, I think we’re going to have to ask again later.

I won a galley of With or Without You via Shelf Awareness (thank you to the publisher), but then it was also an Indiespensable selection, so I both got this book for free and paid for it. Either way, my thoughts are my own.

[Victoria Weinstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would classify this as a parasitic memoir where the author isn't a very interesting character at all, but serves up a charismatic abuser for public consumption with no sense of respect for that person's privacy or complexity. Domenica Ruta is a good writer but she has nothing to reveal about herself that isn't intimately connected to, and blamed on, her toxic mother Kathi. The chronology of the book is a mess -- either tell a story in order or chuck that structure out the window! I don't think Ruta has the necessary distance, time or insight to do anything original in the genre. I was left totally perplexed as to how she earned her scholarships and grants for writer' workshops -- there has to be more there than "I was smart" or "I drank a lot and wrote." WHAT did she write? WHY did she write? I wanted to hear much more about the inner life of an artist who is in so much pain and so drug addled and still able to function well enough to earn grants and scholarships and invitations to writing workshops. What was with the long, strange tacked on chapter about her dog?

There's a lot of craft here but no real insight. A lot of blame and showcasing of mom's craziness, but no writerly voice.

I also admit that I think it's a nasty bit of business to author a ripping condemnation of one's mother while she's still alive. It feels like a really tacky bit of exploitation and revenge.

I live in the Boston area and really appreciated Ruta's ability to capture the area. I loved her description of working in the nursing home -- it was the only truly clear-eyed bit of the book. The rest of her story needs more time to marinate. I am guessing, for instance, that not "all" of the students at Andover had Laura Ashley bedspreads and that not "all" of the students at Oberlin were stoners. Only time can lend Ruta some perspective. I'd appreciate hearing her revisit this complicated material again in 20 years.

[La Petite Américaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a general rule about memoirs: In order to write a good one, one you have to be famous, have lived in close proximity to someone famous, or have survived something so unbelievable that it's better than fiction (as in, you can't make this shit up). If you're not famous and haven't exactly lived through, say, this or this, then really, you have no authority on anything, and nothing interesting to say.

This is precisely the problem with Domenica Ruta's memoir. She comes from no place of authority to even be writing a memoir: she's barely over 30, she's not famous, she's not a survivor of anything 3 out of 4 people haven't dealt with, and her "recovery" happened so recently it could have been yesterday. This can't even qualify as one of those memoirs about surviving childhood adversity or rising above the ashes of despair because, shit, the girl has barely been sober long enough for me to take her seriously. And having no authority means your readers are left wondering what the hell the point of the story is.

In essence, this is a lot of bitching combined with way-too-many-pages of soul-searching that goes from tedious to agonizing.

But that's the thing. Like me, like my friends, like millions of others, Domenica is just another person who had some sucky things happen to her. I'm shocked by how similar she is to my girlfriends from college: Italian-American girls with thick Bahhhstin accents who came from blue-collar families in Peabody and Danvers, who survived traumatic childhoods and were the first of their lot to attend college. And what would those girls say about Ruta's story? Something akin to "You gadda bad ma'? You had it haaahhhd? Me too. So fackin' whaaaaat?"

My sentiments exactly.

The only difference between Ruta and the rest of us? Domenica Ruta broods. She wallows. And doesn't shut ... the fuck ... up. She doesn't seem to get the fact that having bad shit happen to you doesn't make you special, it just makes you normal. And that's boring.

Two stars for the couple of well-written sections, but, overall...

UGH.

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Check out this review and others like it at BadAssBookReviews

Domenica Ruta’s book is a brutally honest portrait of her childhood, her mother, her family and of herself. Although the subject matter is ugly and disturbing, Ruta writes it in such a beautifully and addictive way. I could not put this book down. My home life was the far opposite of Ruta’s, but on the pages of this book I lived her childhood with her. I felt like crying and I did laugh out loud multiple times. Ruta has a gift for taking the reader where she wants and giving the reader an experience of a new and different life.

Domenica is the girl you may have known at school that your parents wouldn’t let you socialize with or maybe you were friends with her, but your mom wouldn’t let you go over to her house. Domenica’s tale is amazing and shocking. Her mother is a self-centered woman and an addict of everything – violence, drugs, drinking, eating and tv/movies. Domenica often goes to school in dirty, worn out clothes and describes herself (unfairly) to be an unattractive young girl.

“On a good day, I was and still am often startled by what the mirror has to offer.”

Her father is physically abusive and scary. Both parents are unprepared to parent, not entirely unwilling to parent, but unprepared.

“Neither of my parents tired of telling me how gorgeous everyone thought they were when they were young. Pride like this is both tyrannical and tragic, for the chief function of pride is to usher in the fall.”

“Listen, you have no idea what it’s like to be really good-looking,” my father said.

“I’d feel sorry for your future husband,” my father said grinning, “but who would ever be crazy enough to marry a cow like you?”

“Honey,” my mother asked in a plaintive voice, “why do you always look like a fat forty-year old lesbian?”

Despite their flaws, Ruta’s love for her parents and her family shines through the words on the pages in this book.

Dominica grew up in a household where she was repeatedly told that she was unattractive, was strewn with garbage and drug paraphernalia and yet, she loved to read, she loved to learn and she was driven to succeed. How does this happen? How does a drug running and drug-using mother raise an author? Despite being completely self-focused and bizarrely unprepared to mother, Domenica’s other is obsessed with her succeeding in life. She learns about boarding school, ballet lessons and makes these happen for her daughter. Despite living in poverty and being relatively uneducated herself, she is determined to give her daughter these opportunities. Yet, she wants her daughter to succeed on her terms…

“My mother was always hounding me to get pregnant while I was in high school.”

“My mother didn’t fuss over me as much once I started smoking pot. She seemed relieved.”

In the end, the book is about a daughter’s love for her mother but who also has a desperate need to separate from her mother’s abuse and dysfunction in order to survive. Stories about mothers and alcohol abuse are usually not my thing, but I loved this book. If you like to read and experience something different from who you are, this book will take you there.

[Meghan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although this memoir manages to keep the reader interested, it lacks conviction and reliability.

Perhaps the backlash surrounding James Frey's Million Little Pieces biased me while reading, but Nikki's story just didn't seem to add up. Her excessive drinking and drug use, such that she blacked out and was unaware of her surroundings/action didn't line up with the supposed academic excellence she claimed to achieve. As things such as university enrollment and graduation can be fact-checked but level of drug abuse cannot, there was a sense of exaggeration for dramatic affect when it came to her substance abuse. Her story just didn't feel believable. The author's tendency to gloss over events was also problematic. There are no rules that require an author to include every single moment in a memoir, it's okay to leave out parts of one's life. But if an author does include something, they need to commit to it. Otherwise, it tells the reader "I don't trust you or care about you enough to tell you the truth'- not something one's reader should feel if you want them to care about the story.

Another hindrance was the lack of narrative flow. She does state that for recovering addicts, memories return in no particular order. This may be true, but it doesn't make for a strong piece of writing. The author jumps from one time period to another, within the same chapter and even section of a chapter, without any reasoning or even connection. There isn't enough direction to feel like a real story but the disjointedness does not seem purposeful enough to be a piece of stream-of-consciousness writing. Stories, thoughts, and ideas are half-formed but not in an artistic or meaningful way- or in a way that makes it clear the half-formation is intentional. It reads like an ENGL 1001 paper where the writer has some good ideas but either doesn't know how to develop them or doesn't care to (and believes they can get a good grade with half-assed work). I ended up with the feeling that the author's process was to sit down and make a list of memories as they came into her head and then just stick in some sentences around them.

The copy I read is a preview copy but I don't believe the publisher will send it back to the author/editor to fix the construction and flow prior to official publication. This is too bad. There is a potential for a powerful memoir in this book but it doesn't make it. I am a bit surprised this memoir reached publication, to the point where I wonder if perhaps someone felt asking a recovering addict to re-edit their life story was inappropriate. But a published memoir isn't an AA soliloquy; it should be a piece of strong literary work and Ruta's book just isn't at that point.

Criticisms aside for the moment, this is an enjoyable enough read to kill some time. However, I wouldn't recommend it and will most likely forget I read it as soon as I finished.

Nikki Ruta may have some potential as an author, but she will need to refine (or at least select) her style and engage in more rigorous editing.

[Deborah Bluminberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has such great reviews, and I heard the author's interview on NPR, so I was eager to read this book, and now that I have, I can't figure out what all the hoopla is about. The writing is very good, almost lyrical in some places. The story, however, is a very different story. Nikki's mother is an alcoholic and drug addict. They live a totally chaotic, dysfunctional life. The house is a run down shack filled with trash and a steady stream of drug addicts coming and going. Nikki falls into the same substance abuse habits of her mother, yet, she manages to excel in a private prep school, she gets into Oberlin College, gets accepted into a Master's level writing program at the University of Texas. Meantime, her mother, with a heavy drug habit, takes over a failing cab company and turns it into a million dollar business. Nothing in this book makes much sense. And it's repetitive--the mother is high and neglectful, Nikki is lonely and miserable and makes bad choices, over and over and over. And, at the end, there is a section that talks about the dogs the various family members have owned over the years. What the hell was that??? The good prose of this book does not make up for its poor story line.

[Larnacouer de SH · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eminim babam bana beni sevdiğini söylemiştir. Belki bebekken.
“Seni seviyorum.”
Bu sözleri aklımın erdiği yıllarda mutlaka söylemiş olmalı. Ateşim çıktığında ya da Noel sabahında belki? Okula başladığım gün? Ben ona bunu söylediğimde?
Söylediğinden eminim. Söylemiş olmalı. Ama hiç hatırlamıyorum.

//

Hakkında konuşması haliyle önermesi çok zor bir kitap. Bütünüyle çok ezici belki okurken bağ kuran hassas kalpli okurlar için biraz sarsıcı ama çok güzel bir kitap. Bu anlamda okuduğumuz bir kurgu olsaydı 'kesinlikle öneririm, keşke bütün listelerde olsa' derdim ama kurgu dışı bir kitapla karşı karşıya olduğumuzda işler biraz değişiyor: Bize hayatını, ruhunu açan bir kadın var sonuçta. Açık sözlü, agresif ve çok zeki. Ne yapabiliriz ki? Hazırsanız kahvenizi alıp gelin derim. Hatta mümkünse kahveyi fazla yapın biraz.
Dediğim gibi, hazırsanız...

[Julie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

It only took a few pages of With or Without You: A Memoir, before I needed to flip back to the beginning, and remind myself that this wasn't fiction.

First, because it is incredibly well-written; far better than any memoir (and some fiction) I've ever read. Last, because it is incredibly awful; the situation, not the book.

One wonders how someone - anyone - could go through what Ruta does and come out sane or sober. Though, for several years, it appears she embraced little of either. Which is not surprising, when you consider that one of her favorite activities with Kathi was acting out scenes from 'Mommie Dearest'.

What a field day Freud would have had with this mother-daughter duo.

It is difficult to imagine that such an ugly story could be so compelling. I think what kept me from putting this book down, beyond the amazing writing, was hope. In the face of overwhelming addiction and hereditary dysfunction, I kept hoping that Kathi would get it together; that she and Nikki would both grow up and forge a healthy relationship.

I don't know if I was projecting my personal desires or channeling young Nikki's. And I certainly won't tell you if I got my wish. That would be cheating.

I will tell you that this was a difficult review to write, without indulging in an emotional purge. I found myself identifying, heavily, with certain passages. So much so, that it took me a while to step back at the end.

With or Without You - were it fiction - would be a worthwhile addition to any library. As the dark, almost macabre, true story of one girl's struggle to understand and survive her own life, it is a must-have.

~*~*~

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary electronic galley of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.com [...] professional readers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir came into my hands in advance reader's edition form. It will be released in February, 2013. I devoured it in one gulp. It came with high praise from Amy Bloom and Gary Shteyngart. The marketing person compared it favorably to The Glass Castle. All good.

But for at least 50 pages I was underwhelmed. Where was the lyricism of The Glass Castle? Where was the "darkly hilarious" tone? I admit those 50 pages went by in a flash but couldn't say why.

So yes, bad mother on drugs, poverty, crazy unstable life, addiction, blah, blah, blah. The kid turns out to be a reader, the mom does a couple actual helpful things, and this girl, who by middle school was hooked on OxyContin, managed to graduate with good grades from high school and college, while getting into a prestigious MFA program. Did I mention that she also became an alcoholic?

Try as I might to analyze what happened, all I know is that I got hooked on Domenica Ruta's deadpan, affectless prose. Then when she finally figured out that to survive she needed to lose the mom, I had to find out how she did it. Because the truth that makes this memoir real is that we love our mothers no matter who they are or what they do. Even the best, most perfect moms can haunt you; the poisonous ones are an addiction in themselves.

Final analysis: With or Without You is powerful, possibly a classic in the memoir genre, and does not sugarcoat the damage done nor what it takes to live with said damage. Not exactly inspiring, definitely sobering (no pun intended.)

[Diane Yannick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Domenica Ruta survived a brutal relationship with her single mother, Kathi. The kind where pot was given as a Christmas present and endless supplies of Oxycontin were shared. The kind where Domenica was encouraged to stay home from school and watch good movies and eat ice cream for breakfast. Kathi was described by her daughter as "a narcotic omnivore" and having a "spiritual autoimmune disease". Pretty accurate descriptions from what she told us.

Her mother paid her tuition to parochial school by selling a brick of cocaine, and later insisted that she apply to Andover. Yet after she was there she tried to get her to drop out and get pregnant. She encouraged her artistic talents It was the unpredictability of her mother's addiction/personality that caused Domenica the most confusion and anger. Without emotional stability, she turned to alcohol which escalated during graduate school. Eventually she regained her sobriety but without her mother in her life.

I don't know a child who does not want to be loved by his mother. I do know a few who have had to sever all ties in order to survive. This story brings light to the difficulty of that decision.

Ok, so this sounds like another addiction memoir and you've been there and done that. Not so fast. This memoir is finely crafted, layered, and has a redemptive message. We can not afford to become callous to fellow humans who share their souls with us. We must allow our spirits to reach across the pages and learn something about ourselves in the process. I have no tolerance for poorly written memoirs but this one is special. Domenica is articulate, introspective, and extremely intelligent.

Here are few of my take aways:
"My mother was a creature that needed to lick her fingers and touch an open wire every once in a while. She required this."

"You're just one of those people, Nikki. Like me. We're lonesome. That's all."

"Jesus, Nikki. Do you ever get exhausted being you?"

"There are some things that we have to forget about in order to get through the day."

"Buddhists believe that every human life is like an ornament made of glass, something precious, beautiful, and bound to be destroyed. The trick is to see the world as a glass already shattered, freeing yourself from a life exhausted in dread of the moment of breaking." Now, this one deserves some thought.

[Taylor Church · Rating 5 out of 5]

My gracious I am upset. I am upset because I just learned via Wikipedia that this is the first and presently the only book out by Domenica Ruta. I always wait to read up on authors and their bibliographies until after I read their first piece. It is kind of a dessert to a delicious read for me. But oh the disappointment in discovering that I have to wait an unknown amount of time to read any new work by this literary master.

With or Without You was so well written I don't know if I want to give up writing forever or not sleep until I have crafted a sentence with the fraction of ingenious imagery that Domenica produced on every single page of her first opus. The story is heart breaking, and real. The characters are unbelievable, yet could never be mistaken as fictional. Few pieces of literature are capable of eliciting audible laughs from me, and this book did it nearly every chapter. I am inspired and in awe. This is a beautiful New England junkie story of love and life. Bless it.

[Maureen Stanton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly, there is little reflection in this book, which is a series of anecdotes and tales and little more. Like Vivian Gornick wisely said, you get no credit for the living. You have to make sense of the experience, and there's little of that work done here, so the book feels insular and small. The craft is spotty, with strong passages but other "ugh" moments, especially at the beginning, with direct address to the reader on p. 5 -- "So what else do you need to know about this woman [her mother] before I go on with the story?" Um, it's page 5. A lot. Do your work. Develop the character. Another example of where I cringed: "This other car was red, I remember, but it's possible I'm wrong, that over the years I've painted it in my mother's rage." Ouch. That line actually hurts me. This on p. 4--so not only is it over-the-top purple prose, but unearned as of yet in the book. It seems the writer needed more distance from the story to really do it justice. There is a faint whiff of vengefulness throughout the book, as if the author is thumbing her nose now at those who looked down on her in her childhood. It sours the book. What would have been interesting is a closer examination of how her mother could be so deeply troubled and dysfunctional, but also a woman who revives a dying car service business into a million dollar enterprise. This story gets short shrift, but would have told us much more that we should know about her mother (in answer to the author's question that I quoted above). I no longer trust blurbs by Amy Bloom, Kathryn Harrison, and especially Gary Shteyngart, who called this book "freakishly brilliant." He (or they, and Ruta) seem to have no idea what a really "brilliant" memoir looks like, or does, or how it affects the reader. It is not this.

[Dianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Domenica Ruta tells the story of her life growing up in a completely dysfunctional family and what personal prices were paid. Having a single mother who was more absorbed in her own life and welfare than Domenica's, having no close friends, living with instabilty, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and a total lack of personal worth, her story is gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, blood pressure raising.

The author has bared her soul, told of her pain, failure, successes and even found humor in the events she lived to tell about. Her journey to learning to have self-worth, and accepting who she is, is one that was hard-fought and well-deserved. Writing this was likely as much for her own self-healing, as it was for what can be learned from it.

This is well-written, earthy and completely raw, no sugar coating what so ever! Not a book for the meek!

The ARC edition was provided to me by NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House in exchange for an honest review. Publication Date: Feb 26 2013

[Christina Josling · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to start off by saying I would recommend this book and I read it every opportunity I could. It was well written and definitely held my attention. That being said, there were problems with the book that I couldn't get past. Ruta's story is very disjointed and she jumps all over the place in describing her history. One moment she's a child, then an adolescent, then back to a child without clear transitions.
I also found that the characters are not fleshed out enough. Even though we know her mom is nuts, I feel like I never really got to know her. There wasn't enough character development, despite descriptions of her outrageous acts.
Lastly, Ruta chronicles her own addition. Again, all of a sudden she is an addict. One can easily surmise what led her down this path, but she didn't describe that path.
Too many things just happen in this book, without enough description or build up. I enjoyed this book, but too many things are thrown at the reader without enough description or development.
For more book reviews, have a look at my reading blog www.blackbifocals.com

[Julie Witt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very difficult book to read because it was very raw and emotional and made you think about addiction, abuse, and neglect, but that's what made it so good. Having grown up with some of these same issues, it brought a lot back that I wasn't prepared for, but that's not a bad thing. A good book should make you feel something, whether something good or something bad is up to each person's own experiences, and this book did that for me. There was a whole lot of "there but for the grace of God," let me tell you.

Highly recommend - 4 out of 5 stars.

*** I would like to thank NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group and Domenica Ruta for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[Lori L (She Treads Softly) · Rating 4 out of 5]

With or Without You is a powerful, disturbing, honest memoir by Domenica Ruta. Domenica suffered through a trash-strewn squalid childhood with her single mom, Kathi, in Danvers, Massachusetts. Kathi was a drug addict, dealer, and alcoholic. She was unpredictable and unstable. Even though I had an uncorrected proof, please allow me to share how Domenica describes Kathi:

“Mummy wants to show off her boobies right now.” Her hair was almost black, but she insisted on bleaching it Deborah Harry blond. She had one tattoo, a small but regrettable crab on her left ring finger. It was her astrological sign—the Cancer. Even she was ashamed of it, I know, because she hid it under a gold wedding band long before she ever married. What else do you need to know about this woman before I go on with the story? That she believed it was more important to be an interesting person than it was to be a good one; that she allowed me to skip school whenever I wanted to, and if there was a good movie on TV she wouldn’t let me go to school because, she said, she needed me to stay home and watch it with her; that, thanks to this education, I was the only girl in the second grade who could recite entire scenes from Scarface and The Godfather by heart; that she made me responsible for most of my own meals when I was seven and all the laundry in the house when I was nine; that her ability to make money was alchemical; that she was vainer than a beauty queen, but the last time I saw her she weighed more than two hundred pounds and her arms were encrusted with purulent sores; that she loved me so much she couldn’t help hating me; that at least once a week I still dream she is trying to kill me. (Location 98-107)

As a child Domenica quickly picked up reading on her own. In a family "where people stumbled—and stumbled proudly—over three-syllable words, such a drooling little fiend for literature was endearing to no one. (It should be noted that even the most illiterate of my clan knew their way around a food-stamp application, a subpoena, and a workman’s compensation claim. We were nothing if not adroit at manipulating the system.)"

Kathi would work menial jobs to keep the cable on, get pain killers, and buy good clothes. They also were frequently on welfare. Kathi tried to share her pain killers with Domenica and wanted her daughter to experiment with more drugs at an early age. Domenica, however, resisted much of that (not all) and tried to focus on doing well at school, in spite of her circumstances, although she later succumb to the temptation of addiction. While Kathi's parenting skills were lacking, the whole family had addiction problems. Her grandmother was a dealer, although she wasn't a user. Everyone also swore loudly and often. "And, like movies, bad words were another resource in which my family was truly rich." Domenica also was sexually abused by a relative who was also a pedophile. While her family knew, they choose to remain firmly in denial about his activities.

Finally, Domenica describes her own ascension into drug addiction and alcoholism and how she struggled to overcome her addictions.

I did have a few issues with the book. Her early years began to feel like one bad story of neglect or addiction crashing into another. There was no good time frame or order established to help the reader follow when things occurred. The end felt disjointed and like a lot of information was left out in order to wrap the memoir up quickly. This rushed feeling may simple be due to the amount of time that separates her childhood struggles from her adult addictions and recovery, making the early years easier to reflect upon.

In any event, With or Without You is an emotionally wrought, highly recommended memoir that fans of The Glass Castle may enjoy (keeping in mind that it is not as well written as The Glass Castle).


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House and Netgalley for review purposes.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished this book and it was one of the most amazing books I've read in a long time. I am a big fan of gripping memoirs like "The Glass Castle" or "A Piece of Cake," but it can be really difficult to find similarly addicting books.

"With or Without You" excels because, first of all, the writing is fabulous. I'm a writer myself, and there were some turns of phrase that were so lyrical and evocative that I was jealous that I didn't come up with them myself.

The most amazing thing about this particular memoir, that I think not everyone can relate to, is the nature of having a close family relationship with an addict. If you have that love-hate relationship with anyone you will understand the back and forth nature of Nikki's (Domenica) Ruta's relationship with her mother Kathi. Even when Kathi was heavy into her drug use, it was understandable why Nikki would allow herself to relapse into using again. If you are desperate for connection with someone who is sometimes rejecting and cold, you'll even do things that you know are against your best interests just to be close to them. That overwhelming desire for approval and closeness never goes away, but the fact that you never received it creates an equally intense hatred and disgust. That cruel, sometimes rejecting figure looms large over your life even when you're separated by thousands of miles. Having a relationship with such manipulative people can even make you begin to doubt what you think you know.

I don't think I've ever read another book that so eloquently described how hard it can be to forgive one person who had such a negative impact on your life. At the same time, the writer's gift here is that she put her own feelings into it and I was able to feel her perspective as well as view her mother from the outside. Don't get me wrong: her mother really was terrible, but to me she was nuanced enough that I felt sorry for her, rather than viewing her like she was a cartoony villain. Because she wasn't MY mother I could see how screwed up she must have been herself. Neither Nikki nor her mother seemed like cardboard characters; I really felt like I knew them.

While this satisfied my desire to be caught up in a gripping memoir, I didn't feel like the author was exploiting the awful parts of her upbringing just for the purpose of being lurid or sensationalistic. Overall I just thought this memoir was very well done and I will be thinking about it for a long time to come.

[Jack Waters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dysfunctional childhoods bloat Memoir bookshelves; but they cannot be counted on to be well written. Everyone seems to have a story or thirteen within them, and many are tragic; it takes scrupulous artistry to provide payoff using what might seem from a distance like expected sadness, the type of sadness that many of us encounter either directly or indirectly through friends. The kind that frames it in a way that transcends the pain.

One-ups-manship is a very easy trap to fall into, ie “oh, yeah, your sob story is nothing compared to mine.” Personally -- and I’m sure most agree -- sadness scales shouldn’t be compared between people. Trials and pain come to us in varying degrees. Sometimes a person can weather what seems to be a mighty difficulty while the achilles heel snaps over something seemingly small.

In “With or Without You,” Domenica Ruta charts the course of inescapable familial obligations. The “You” in the title refers to her mother, called within the text as both “Mum” and “Kathi” in what seemed to me at times as reflecting the “With” & the “Without” in the title, respectively. The love she feels for her mother is tested time and time again as drugs and other vices provide the expected highs and lows in life. She writes about familial codependency, that unasked for lot given that can bring a love and sadness so deep it cannot be described, only felt and rationalized.

Ruta writes well enough to plunge into the expected depths of desperate gloom, and her calibrated masochism shows perseverance and the chance for us, as readers, to access the type of empathy that can discover the diamond in the rough, the smile in the shitstorm.

It’s written very well -- the Mary Karr comparisons are expected and correct. I hope Ruta has a long career ahead of her.

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This memoir is incredibly harsh, cruel and sad. But this disturbing account of Domenica Ruta’s life as she grew from being a youngster with a mother who was a drug addict (and every other addict) to an adult whose mother only got worse instead of better is one of huge struggles, deep depression, hope and grim determination.

Kathi, Domenica’s mother, clearly loved her daughter, whom she called Nikki, with a deep devotion. But she had no idea how to be a ‘good’ mother, and her cure for any of her daughter’s ailments was a crushed tablet of some kind, perhaps OxyContin or something similar. When Nikki was nervous, sad, sick…it didn’t matter, Kathi would ‘cure’ it with a tablet!

Nikki dearly loved her grandmother, her Nonna, and felt that she was the only member of her huge, dysfunctional family whom she could trust. Nonna fed her, comforted her and didn’t hand her drugs at the drop of a hat. When Nikki was a young teenager, and had issues with a certain family member, someone whom she hated with a passion, Nonna kept her sane. Nikki also found her Nonna’s house to be much more of a home than her own, as the drug paraphernalia and trash that was always lying around in the run-down, ramshackle home she lived in with her mother, was a place she was unable to bring her friends to at any time.

As Nikki grew to adulthood her life spiralled out of control…the disasters that she encountered along the way make you wonder how she survived past her childhood, let alone to the stage of being able to write this book. It was painful and hard to read in many places, especially knowing it wasn’t fiction, and I wish Domenica all the best for her future.

[Alessandra Trindle · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a mother, if I ever feel that I have failed my children in some way, I can always console myself with the fact that I am not Kathi Ruta. Domenica Ruta's memoir about her childhood reads like a primer for child abuse and child neglect. She copes with her mother's mercurial moods, which are often fueled by drugs, and she silently endures the predatory advances of "Uncle Vic", knowing that no one in her family will stop his molestation of her.

Despite what is, by all counts, a very unstable upbringing, what Kathi Ruta also provided for her daughter was an unparalleled belief in her intelligence and her ability to succeed. Maybe it was a manic episode on the part of the mother to have her daughter apply to every expensive boarding school in North America but the end result is that Domenica received an Andover education and then went on to graduate from Oberlin. She pays a hefty price for her mother's support, which leads to her own addiction spiral and redemption arc.

I found this book difficult to rate because it is a memoir. There are places where the writing is blindingly lucid, compelling to the point of breathlessness, and stomach churningly vivid. Then there are the places where the book rambles, where the author perhaps lays too much blame at the feet of her mother or not enough, where the it's difficult to tell if the author's voice is that of a omniscient teenager or a less certain adult.

Would I recommend it? Absolutely. Will you love it? Most probably. If nothing else, you'll either find yourself commiserating with the author or silently vowing to write a thank you note to your parents.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an Advance Readers Copy of this book through Librarything in return for writing this review, and while I appreciate the free read I assure you the review is wholly honest.

This is a wonderful memoir. I was blown away by the author's grace, honesty, self-awareness, intelligence and skill. The promo materials and cover blurbs compare this to "The Glass Castle", and there are some obvious parallels, but I thought this more closely aligned with books from Mary Karr, Rick Bragg, Heather King and James Brown (the memoirist, not the hardest working man in show business.) Though there is some phenomenally bad parenting to be found here, this is at its heart a memoir of addiction and its legacies. The early 2000's saw a boom in addiction memoirs, some very good and others not so much. I would have thought the ground was saturated, but I do think Domenica Ruta has given us something that adds to the cluttered canon. Recommended for anyone who enjoys reading difficult but beautiful memoirs.

[Sabrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have you ever witnessed a car accident? I mean one that takes place right before your eyes. In your own car you can almost feel the moment of impact. You see the glass falling into your lap. You can taste the adrenaline. Yet, there is nothing you can do to prevent it from happening. Especially when you are just an innocent by stander.

Well, that is how I felt from the beginning to the end of this memoir. You know what is going to happen to this mother/daughter duo. Yet there is nothing you can do. Just sit back and savor the impact.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Proof once again that the worst childhoods can produce the most effective memoirs. As with the Glass Castle, such material in the hands of a talented writer provides a story that would be shocking if fictional, but because it is true, is amazing.

[Dawn Critchfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are all shaped by our past, but it doesn't have to define us. Loved, loved, loved this book about hope and perseverance.

[Darlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have become addicted to reading memoirs and this latest memoir by Domenica Ruta is absolutely riveting. In this memoir, Ms. Ruta tells her very personal, painful and yet triumphant story.. a story which centers around the most important and influential person in her life.. her mother, Kathi. This story is at times painful to read but also humorous and heartwarming... and all of it was compelling.The book begins.. "What else do you need to know about this woman before I go on with the story? That she believed that it was more important to be an interesting person than it was to be a good one; that she allowed me to skip school whenever I wanted to;... that she made me responsible for most of my own meals when I was seven; and all of the laundry in the house when I was nine; that she was vainer than a beauty queen...." Ms. Ruta's simple description of her earliest memories of her mother sets the stage for an incredible, and at times too heartbreaking to believe, inspiring story.

Domenica Ruta's story begins in a small town north of Boston. Born of two people who were clearly too young and immature to be parents, her life never seemed to be the life that a child should experience. Ms. Ruta's parents had an explosive relationship and before long, her father moved out of the home and eventually remarried. She was left behind with her mother..an intelligent but self-absorbed woman who could never get herself together enough financially or emotionally to care for her child. Ms. Ruta's mother, Kathi, was addicted to drugs and often sold them to generate income, had a serious problem with alcohol and entered one disastrous romantic relationship after another. I suppose, from the description of Ms. Ruta's family life, it would seem inevitable what direction her life would most likely take; but sometimes that old adage.. "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade"... really IS true.

Despite not having had the guidance and stability that children need in their lives to flourish, Ms. Ruta's was inspired in one very positive way by her mother.. her mother loved to tell stories and her love of stories had a positive impact.. so much so that, despite not having a single book in the home, Ms. Ruta developed a passionate love of books and reading. Through reading, she learned that she could rise above what was happening in her life and could reinvent herself... and reinvent herself was what she did! Her good grades and school achievements earned her a scholarship to a private school and from there she worked hard and created her own future.

Of course, not all went smoothly on Ms. Ruta's path to a brighter future. In college, she developed some of her mother's bad habits . She began drinking heavily and found herself on that downward spiral that she was so well acquainted with from life with her mother. Through a lot of help, perseverance and even some backsliding into her old habits, Domenica made her way through the maze of her addiction and took control of her life. Unfortunately, at the same time Ms. Ruta was getting control of HER life, her mother's life was unraveling and ultimately fell apart completely. With each success that her daughter achieved, Kathi grew more bitter and angry. It was at this point that Ms. Ruta made the decision that, for her own peace of mind, she could no longer communicate with her mother in any way.. she broke off all ties with her.

Although as of the writing of this book, the two were still not in contact with each other, Ms. Ruta wrote a very interesting and heartfelt afterward in which she thanked her mother for her gift of storytelling. The mother/daughter relationship can be complicated, but she seems hopeful that they will someday make their way back to each other. I couldn't help but admire Ms. Ruta's courage and strength in taking control of her life and for realizing that sometimes, no matter how intensely we may love someone, we can't force them to change.. and sometimes the most loving thing we can do for them.. and ourselves.. is to walk away.

I love this memoir and all of the others I have immersed myself in because it feels so comforting and reassuring to find a bit of myself in the struggles and lives of others.

[Stefani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Competition for most fucked-up-life is always bittersweet, I suppose. There's one too many memoirs out there that reek of conceited, look-at-me and how fucked up and drug addicted I am, Cat Marnell-style self importance and far too few that don't milk their bad experiences in life for maximum shock value and/or career boosting ability.

I think Domenica Ruta kind of falls somewhere in the middle of all this. She definitely had a shitty life—there's no denying or sugarcoating that fact. Things that stick out in my mind: her mother having her daughter watch while she makes a failed attempt to bash someone's windshield in with a crowbar; her mother feeding her OxyCodones for headaches and probably contributing to her alcoholism later in life and, of course, refusing to listen when her daughter told her she was sexually abused by a family friend. Given this background, though, I wouldn't say she wallows in victimhood nor whines about her experience. Her narrative voice is very sardonic and witty in a way that doesn't make me think she's burying these experiences in her subconscious or belittling their meaning. Because she attends a boarding school and college out of state, I think this gives her a safe place to reflect on her life, make sense of the things that have happened to her and realize that she is not fated to the same existence as her mother who, by the way, absurdly suggests that her daughter get pregnant in high school so that she "has another baby" to raise (her mother).

I docked a star for the later chapters that deal with her descent into alcoholism and struggle to stay clean. For me, those chapters were veering way too far in the direction of humblebrag, ego stroking bad experiences like "I drank two bottles of whiskey today and puked all night" yet was able to write a novel and complete an MFA, look at how brilliant I must be! Maybe it's just that there are too many memoirs being written by alcoholic/drug addicted overachievers like Elizabeth Wurtzel and not enough being written by ordinary people battling addictions (although, I suppose the overachievers are the ones ambitious enough to write books and think that people would be interested enough to read them).

But, damn, this book was funny.

I didn't have many friends growing up; then I hit puberty and things got even worse. Here begins my angry phase, the self-centered, quietly homicidal years, that special hiccup of time between my first bra and my first joint. Fortunately for my peers, I spent most of my time free time during childhood and early adolescence sleeping.

"Why aren't you making friends?" Mum asked me. "Maybe you smell bad, Honey. Do you wear deodorant?"

[Susanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book, and I was convinced to buy it because of the author's list of accomplishments/recognitions and the blurbs from big authors - plus it was on my list from reading a review, perhaps the glowing review in the New York Times by Margaux Fragoso, who herself wrote a very powerful memoir about child sexual abuse. It was a quick read, but throughout the book I just kept wondering who Ruta knows, to get all that accolades and blurbs with a book like this, and feeling as if this book was pushed out into the world before it was really ready.

There is no doubt Ruta is bright and accomplished, and it is amazing that she escaped her upbringing to get the education she received and become a writer as she has. The book certainly conveys the grittiness, despair and general grossness of her childhood, with two troubled parents and their accompanying ripples of troubled friends and family. Some of the reviews here criticize this work for writing about her mother while she is alive, but I don't think that's the trouble with the book. To me, the issue is that Ruta keeps her focus so much on what happened, and not enough on why it happened, or more importantly, what it meant to her. In several places she tells (or hints, actually holding back from specifics, as in the event(s) with Uncle Vic) what happened, and then abruptly switches gears, leaving the reader wondering about the impact on Ruta. She even mentions, late in the book, the adage that if you show a gun on a mantel, it has to go off later, which I thought of when Ruta mentions her mother's gun (not a spoiler, I read about it in an interview on her website too), but there is never any later thought or action devoted to that gun.

The book's other issue is its organization. I thought it would be a straight-through read, but it jumps around and in places is repetitious. Perhaps it is intended to be a series of linked essays arranged in roughly chronological order, but I can't tell. At the end, there is a section devoted to her dog, and I was shocked and surprised -- she had a dog through all those previous chapters?!

The beginning of the book is luminous, and the chapter Home is breathtaking, which demonstrate what the author is capable of. It's just a shame that she didn't take the time to make this book what it could have been.

[Kats · Rating 4 out of 5]

The memoir of Domenica Ruta, a writer raised in a severely dysfunctional family by a drug-addicted mother, is powerful. I enjoyed it not merely for the raw subject matter, which in my life and work experience I've learned is not terribly uncommon, but more for Domenica's gifts as a writer. I love so many lines, so many passages but this excerpt on page 181-182 is probably my favorite because I found so much truth in it:

"I will not become my mother.
I will not get fat like her. I will not starve myself. I will not call gin and a handful of peanuts "dinner." I will not bury my libido with the tulip bulbs in the front yard. I will not become a humorless, abstemious prude. I will become neither a cheap nor an expensive whore. I will never cheat on my husband. I will never leave my kids alone with a man I hardly know. I will never get married. I will not deny myself an orgasm. I will never set foot in a church. I will celebrate a devout faith in capital-G God. I will never knit. I will learn to hem, darn, patch, and sew my own clothes. I will cook real food, have a healthy dinner on my kitchen table no matter what. I will never hit my children. I will make my own money. I will leave the first time he hits me. My ass will never resemble a large sack of potatoes. My house will be clean and my children will be proud to invite their friends over. I will not obsess over real estate, antiques, collectible dolls, reality television, tarot cards, crossword puzzles, or what the neighbors think. I will never buy things I can't afford. I will allow myself to wear nice clothes. I will dare to enjoy myself. I will not go to prison. I will not become a racist, a homophobe, an anti-Semite, a xenophobe. I will read widely and with an open mind. I will travel the world until no place is unfamiliar. I will never own cats. I will try and try even if it kills me. I will never give up. I will not become the woman she was."

Great writing, and a window into alcoholism and drug addiction that rings true in my professional experience.

[Jacqueline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I typically love a good memoir. In fact, many of the books that have stuck with me the longest have been memoirs. This, however, will probably not stick with me much past today.

In order to write a memoir, you should either a.) be famous for something or b.) have some terribly horrific/inspiring/life-altering/ mind-blowing story to tell. Rutka has neither. I still can't figure out why someone decided her story is any different from the hundreds of kids in my high school, the thousands of people in my town, or the many millions of Americans who have led lives exactly like hers. I can find no discernible reason why one should read this book or care about this story beyond the typical empathy we possess for any normal human being.

All that being said, I could have enjoyed a memoir that was well-told simply because of my love for good writing. I could have forgiven her for being unimportant (because, really, aren't most of our lives individually unimportant to the masses?) if she'd just told a decent story. So here's the crux- I really, really disliked the method of delivery of this story too. The first half skips willy-nilly through the 1980's, 90's, and well into the 00's with absolutely NO discernible path or pattern. One minute she's 3 in the early 80's, a page later 16 in the 90's, and then back to fresh-from-the-womb paragraphs after that. It's maddening in its irregularity. While there were parts that were well-written, even mildly entertaining, overall I found this book whiny, bitchy, and wholly unsympathetic.

Perhaps this book would sit better with me if Rutka were even a decade removed from her tale of addiction and despair. As it sits, however, all I found was someone fresh off her ordeal with no ability to provide perspective on her recovery. It just left me repeating "So what?" and "Who cares" over and over again.