“A daughter gives birth to her mother’s voice and finds her own in this remarkable bifurcated narrative. Set against a backdrop of fading Hollywood glory, Two Memoirs portrays two lives, two eras, two equally compelling stories, deeply interwoven and powerfully rendered in Amanda Montei’s clear-eyed, strong-hearted and revealing prose.”
—Janet Sarbanes, author of Army of One
Two Memoirs is written in two voices— Amanda’s and her mother’s. In these dueling coming-of-age memoirs spanning early Hollywood and 90s Los Angeles, both mother and daughter explore how addiction, American mythology, money, sexuality, and their proximity to celebrity shape their lives.
Confronting the instability of memory and the difficult search for truth in memoir, Two Memoirs is a biography of a mother, an autobiography of a daughter, a story about being a girl and finding one’s story in a culture of appearances—but also a conversation, an argument, and a tribute to the way our mothers’ words both haunt and guide us.
