Hungry Hill: A Memoir

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A M E M O I R H U N G R Y H I L L C A R O L E O ’ M A L L E Y G A U N T Advance Praise for HUNGRY HILL “Hungry Hill is engaging and memorable. . . . One of the most endearing aspects of the book is its lack of guile and its feeling of authenticity—it glows with honesty.” —madeleine blais, author of Uphill Walkers: Portrait of a Family “A vivid portrait of the transgenerational effects of alcoholism and a courageous response to the disease. . . . The book captures the essence of the isolation, fear, and sadness of a girl who, instead of having a childhood, lived a dilemma—doing all the right things, being a good girl who realizes that everything she does she does alone or under an umbrella of shame and wishful thinking, living in a home overshadowed by the effects of alcoholism from one generation to the next.” —maureen mcglame, director, COASA (Children of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse), Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps “To paraphrase Tolstoy, ‘Happy families are all alike, but every alcoholic family is unhappy in its own way.’ In this powerful memoir, Carole Gaunt writes of being the only girl in a family with seven brothers and an alcoholic father, following the early death of her mother. For those of us who also grew up around alcoholism, her story and insights are poignant and involving. . . . Reading about the author seeking out jobs so she would never have to ask her stepmother for money gave me a feeling of measured triumph in how the small choices an individual makes can lead the way out of family traps; looking for those jobs and deciding to look to herself for stability rather than to the crazy adults around her was the beginning of health. But the book also shows how dysfunctional families rob their children of trust and innocence way too soon, and how that haunts them in their later years. A moving story.” —christopher durang, author of Christopher Durang: 27 Short Plays hungry hill = ...