“Small Fry” by Lisa Brennan- Jobs

The best thing about “Small Fry” by Lisa Brennan-Jobs is this: for 381 pages Steve Jobs is alive again. He is powerful, creative and exciting and you can almost think that perhaps he did not die of pancreatic cancer in 2011. Unfortunately, he did die and for most of his life, he was a very bad dad to this author. The big revelation in this book is that Lisa’s mom Chrisann, who was Jobs’ high school girlfriend, was also a prickly parent who suffered from depression. Despite growing up with two parents who made her feel unwanted and neglected most of the time, she has written a beautiful memoir full of amazing recollections and details from her childhood. She felt so invisible to her father that she would often steal small things, and once even money, from his house just to feel closer to him. The bulk of the book takes place during a short period of time when Lisa left her mother’s house to move in with Steve. Lisa was excited beyond belief to have her dad so close, but his behavior remained distant, cold, unpredictable, and sometimes even cruel. His marriage to Laurene Powell, the only woman he would ever marry, was not much help to Lisa, either. When Jobs and Laurene had a son in 1991, Lisa was relegated to the role of babysitter, while her dad and step-mother went out to lavish parties. The tragic father-daughter relationship rages on, until finally she moves out and into the house of two friendly neighbors, who support her dream of going to college at Harvard. As Jobs lay dying in bed, Lisa visited her father for the last time and seemed to get a thinly veiled apology for the years of neglect. But the true triumph and, I imagine, cathartic victory is that she was able to sit down and tell her story, and her truth once and for all. She survived and now is happily raising a family of her own, making sure to stay well connected to her children along the way. To purchase this book on Amazon click here