Overview

"A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A Good Morning America Recommended Book • A LitReactor Best Book of the Year • A BuzzFeed Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Rumpus Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Bustle Most Anticipated Book of the Month   ""A pathbreaking feminist manifesto, impossible to put down or dismiss. Gina Frangello tells the morally complex story of her adulterous relationship with a lover and her shortcomings as a mother, and in doing so, highlights the forces that shaped, silenced, and shamed her: everyday misogyny, puritanical expectations regarding female sexuality and maternal sacrifice, and male oppression."" —Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game Gina Frangello spent her early adulthood trying to outrun a youth marked by poverty and violence. Now a long-married wife and devoted mother, the better life she carefully built is emotionally upended by the death of her closest friend. Soon, awakened to fault lines in her troubled marriage, Frangello is caught up in a recklessly passionate affair, leading a double life while continuing to project the image of the perfect family. When her secrets are finally uncovered, both her home and her identity will implode, testing the limits of desire, responsibility, love, and forgiveness. Blow Your House Down is a powerful testimony about the ways our culture seeks to cage women in traditional narratives of self-sacrifice and erasure. Frangello uses her personal story to examine the place of women in contemporary society: the violence they experience, the rage they suppress, the ways their bodies often reveal what they cannot say aloud, and finally, what it means to transgress ""being good"" in order to reclaim your own life."

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9781640093164

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Reviews

A Good Morning America Recommended Book - A BuzzFeed Most Anticipated Book of the Year - A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year - A Rumpus Most Anticipated Book of the Year - A Bustle Most Anticipated Book of the Month Compelling, honest, and thought-provoking, Gina Frangello's memoir is an inspired addition to her astounding body of work. --Charlize Theron Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason . . . [is] her most lyrical, adventurous and important work. --Meredith Maran, Los Angeles Times My bet for breakout of the year. The Chicagoan's memoir takes on gender expectations and marital affairs in such a brutal, self-lacerating candor, you wonder who should play her in the movie. --Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune An unforgettable book. --K.W. Colyard, Bustle, a Best Book of the Month Too many memoirs fall into the trap of mistaking martyrdom for nobility, sacrifice for bravery; they float on the still-shiny surface rather than excavating into the murk. Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down is not that kind of memoir. Instead, it is fierce and violent, a rampaging storm--a breathtaking, luminous reminder of the wreckage we are capable of making of our own lives. --Kristin Iversen, Refinery29, One of the Best New Books of the Year Underlying this generous and intimate personal history is a censure of the broad cultural suppression (and demonization) of women's rage, passion, and autonomy; and the gleeful eagerness to punish women who have transgressed. Frangello presents rationalizations for her actions, but she isn't asking to be excused: This isn't so much about seeking absolution--though she knows she's being judged--as much as it's about reclaiming a story that is too easily appropriated and rewritten by outsiders, often through a lens of misogyny. It's a powerful, electric testimony. --Arianna Rebolini, BuzzFeed Raw, edgy, and revealing, it is a book that dares to expose everything, not least its author's vulnerability. --Alta Broadening her own story to examine all the ways our culture entraps women in narratives of 'goodness, ' Frangello transgresses both societal expectations and genre bounds: this is not merely a memoir, but a call to arms. --Chicago Review of Books, a Must-Read Book of the Month I'm a sucker for the sort of story arc in Blow Your House Down Woman follows the rules. Woman becomes wife, mother. Woman is 'good' in all things. One day, following crisis or unrelenting ennui, woman realizes that her life feels hollow or binding, so she sets about changing said life (sometimes in explosive fashion). I love this story enough in novel form, but better yet, Gina Frangello unravels it in all its reckless, transgressive, messy glory in this memoir about womanhood and misogyny, sex and joy. --Literary Hub, One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year In this searing memoir, novelist Frangello charts the spectacular highs and devastating lows of her midlife with extraordinary candor . . . Frangello describes this bold and tumultuous period of her life in intimate and remarkable detail, and despite the tumult celebrates her own resilience. This unapologetic account both moves and fascinates. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Searingly honest and compulsively readable, this memoir serves as a post-#MeToo feminist dictum about the deeply complex and multilayered emotional and sexual lives of women. With humor and a no-holds-barred self-inspection, the author illuminates these layers and reminds us that 'the clean reduction of a woman to any prime number is always a lie.' Uncompromisingly fearless in its candor, this memoir/feminist manifesto is a powerful account of a woman's self-acceptance that deserves a place among the best literary memoirs of the last decade. Frangello's groundbreaking testimony sets itself apart. --Library Journal (starred review) There is pain in every divorce story, but not every divorce story can be related by a narrator as capable as Gina Frangello. Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason, Frangello's raw, eloquent account of the demise of her marriage, is an exemplar of self-reflection, tinged with optimism about the power to recover one's life from the depth of suffering. --Harvey Freedenberg, BookPage (starred review) Gina Frangello can always make me think and laugh; she's also one of the very few authors who's made me cry. Blow Your House Down is searing, honest, heartbreaking, heart-mending, and a hell of a wild ride. Frangello says things women aren't allowed to say, even to ourselves. --Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers

A Rumpus Most Anticipated Book of Next Year Compelling, honest, and thought-provoking, Gina Frangello's memoir is an inspired addition to her astounding body of work. --Charlize Theron My bet for breakout of the year. The Chicagoan's memoir takes on gender expectations and marital affairs in such a brutal, self-lacerating candor, you wonder who should play her in the movie. --Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune Too many memoirs fall into the trap of mistaking martyrdom for nobility, sacrifice for bravery; they float on the still-shiny surface rather than excavating into the murk. Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down is not that kind of memoir. Instead, it is fierce and violent, a rampaging storm--a breathtaking, luminous reminder of the wreckage we are capable of making of our own lives. --Kristin Iversen, Refinery29, One of the Best New Books of the Year I'm a sucker for the sort of story arc in Blow Your House Down Woman follows the rules. Woman becomes wife, mother. Woman is 'good' in all things. One day, following crisis or unrelenting ennui, woman realizes that her life feels hollow or binding, so she sets about changing said life (sometimes in explosive fashion). I love this story enough in novel form, but better yet, Gina Frangello unravels it in all its reckless, transgressive, messy glory in this memoir about womanhood and misogyny, sex and joy. --Literary Hub, One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year In this searing memoir, novelist Frangello charts the spectacular highs and devastating lows of her midlife with extraordinary candor . . . Frangello describes this bold and tumultuous period of her life in intimate and remarkable detail, and despite the tumult celebrates her own resilience. This unapologetic account both moves and fascinates. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Gina Frangello can always make me think and laugh; she's also one of the very few authors who's made me cry. Blow Your House Down is searing, honest, heartbreaking, heart-mending, and a hell of a wild ride. Frangello says things women aren't allowed to say, even to ourselves. --Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down blazes open a radical new portrait of a woman's life with dazzling honesty and breathtaking beauty. Threading through the terrors of breast cancer and caretaking a dying father, navigating the end of a long-term marriage and the burst of new love, Blow Your House Down reveals the epic journey of one woman's life and body. This book is a heart beating, not beaten. This book is a mighty heartsong. --Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Chronology of Water

A Rumpus Most Anticipated Book of Next Year Compelling, honest, and thought-provoking, Gina Frangello's memoir is an inspired addition to her astounding body of work. --Charlize Theron Too many memoirs fall into the trap of mistaking martyrdom for nobility, sacrifice for bravery; they float on the still-shiny surface rather than excavating into the murk. Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down is not that kind of memoir. Instead, it is fierce and violent, a rampaging storm--a breathtaking, luminous reminder of the wreckage we are capable of making of our own lives. --Kristin Iversen, Refinery29, One of the Best New Books of the Year I'm a sucker for the sort of story arc in Blow Your House Down Woman follows the rules. Woman becomes wife, mother. Woman is 'good' in all things. One day, following crisis or unrelenting ennui, woman realizes that her life feels hollow or binding, so she sets about changing said life (sometimes in explosive fashion). I love this story enough in novel form, but better yet, Gina Frangello unravels it in all its reckless, transgressive, messy glory in this memoir about womanhood and misogyny, sex and joy. --Literary Hub, One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year In this searing memoir, novelist Frangello charts the spectacular highs and devastating lows of her midlife with extraordinary candor . . . Frangello describes this bold and tumultuous period of her life in intimate and remarkable detail, and despite the tumult celebrates her own resilience. This unapologetic account both moves and fascinates. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Gina Frangello can always make me think and laugh; she's also one of the very few authors who's made me cry. Blow Your House Down is searing, honest, heartbreaking, heart-mending, and a hell of a wild ride. Frangello says things women aren't allowed to say, even to ourselves. --Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down blazes open a radical new portrait of a woman's life with dazzling honesty and breathtaking beauty. Threading through the terrors of breast cancer and caretaking a dying father, navigating the end of a long-term marriage and the burst of new love, Blow Your House Down reveals the epic journey of one woman's life and body. This book is a heart beating, not beaten. This book is a mighty heartsong. --Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Chronology of Water In Blow Your House Down, Gina Frangello has created a form, a structure of her own out of necessity: the need to tell all the stories, especially the ones we feel cannot be told. In the process, she gives us a new language through which we might come to some sort of reckoning with ourselves. This book is an excavation of the deepest and most complex corridors of the heart. --David L. Ulin, author of The Lost Art of Reading Blow Your House Down redefines a genre that, in recent years, has become too synonymous with concepts like 'bravery' and 'inspiration'--but the act of writing in this nuanced, intelligent way doesn't make Frangello brave; it makes her an artist, one of our finest working today. This book burns down our old way of looking at the world's oldest genre and makes way for something bold and new. --Emily Rapp Black, author of The Still Point of the Turning World

A Rumpus Most Anticipated Book of Next Year Compelling, honest, and thought-provoking, Gina Frangello's memoir is an inspired addition to her astounding body of work. --Charlize Theron In this searing memoir, novelist Frangello charts the spectacular highs and devastating lows of her midlife with extraordinary candor . . . Frangello describes this bold and tumultuous period of her life in intimate and remarkable detail, and despite the tumult celebrates her own resilience. This unapologetic account both moves and fascinates. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Gina Frangello can always make me think and laugh; she's also one of the very few authors who's made me cry. Blow Your House Down is searing, honest, heartbreaking, heart-mending, and a hell of a wild ride. Frangello says things women aren't allowed to say, even to ourselves. --Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down blazes open a radical new portrait of a woman's life with dazzling honesty and breathtaking beauty. Threading through the terrors of breast cancer and caretaking a dying father, navigating the end of a long-term marriage and the burst of new love, Blow Your House Down reveals the epic journey of one woman's life and body. This book is a heart beating, not beaten. This book is a mighty heartsong. --Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Chronology of Water In Blow Your House Down, Gina Frangello has created a form, a structure of her own out of necessity: the need to tell all the stories, especially the ones we feel cannot be told. In the process, she gives us a new language through which we might come to some sort of reckoning with ourselves. This book is an excavation of the deepest and most complex corridors of the heart. --David L. Ulin, author of The Lost Art of Reading Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down is everything a memoir should be: fascinating, beautifully written, unwilling to turn away from terror and joy while also acknowledging how often they intersect and turn into one another. Frangello is a truth teller who refuses to cop to an easy happy ending, shining a light on the platitudes and false promises of our myopic understanding of what constitutes a 'good life.' Blow Your House Down redefines a genre that, in recent years, has become too synonymous with concepts like 'bravery' and 'inspiration'--but the act of writing in this nuanced, intelligent way doesn't make Frangello brave; it makes her an artist, one of our finest working today. This book burns down our old way of looking at the world's oldest genre and makes way for something bold and new. --Emily Rapp Black, author of The Still Point of the Turning World I don't know anyone who can write like Gina Frangello. I'm in awe. --Jennifer Pastiloff, author of On Being Human Truth is a scarce commodity in books about sex and marriage--I mean the real truth, the hard stuff. Blow Your House Down is a truth bomb. Writing with the immediacy of fiction and the acuity of criticism, Gina Frangello gives us her harrowing, luminous, and very real story of love, marriage, and aftermath. It's a huge act of generosity to write these intimate and risky things that make other women feel less alone. We are left stunned and consoled. --Claire Dederer, author of Love and Trouble

Compelling, honest, and thought-provoking, Gina Frangello's memoir is an inspired addition to her astounding body of work. -Charlize Theron Gina Frangello can always make me think and laugh; she's also one of the very few authors who's made me cry. Blow Your House Down is searing, honest, heartbreaking, heart-mending, and a hell of a wild ride. Frangello says things women aren't allowed to say, even to ourselves. -Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down blazes open a radical new portrait of a woman's life with dazzling honesty and breathtaking beauty. Threading through the terrors of breast cancer and caretaking a dying father, navigating the end of a long-term marriage and the burst of new love, Blow Your House Down reveals the epic journey of one woman's life and body. This book is a heart beating, not beaten. This book is a mighty heartsong. -Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Chronology of Water In Blow Your House Down, Gina Frangello has created a form, a structure of her own out of necessity: the need to tell all the stories, especially the ones we feel cannot be told. In the process, she gives us a new language through which we might come to some sort of reckoning with ourselves. This book is an excavation of the deepest and most complex corridors of the heart. -David L. Ulin, author of The Lost Art of Reading Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down is everything a memoir should be: fascinating, beautifully written, unwilling to turn away from terror and joy while also acknowledging how often they intersect and turn into one another. Frangello is a truth teller who refuses to cop to an easy happy ending, shining a light on the platitudes and false promises of our myopic understanding of what constitutes a 'good life.' Blow Your House Down redefines a genre that, in recent years, has become too synonymous with concepts like 'bravery' and 'inspiration'--but the act of writing in this nuanced, intelligent way doesn't make Frangello brave; it makes her an artist, one of our finest working today. This book burns down our old way of looking at the world's oldest genre and makes way for something bold and new. -Emily Rapp Black, author of The Still Point of the Turning World I don't know anyone who can write like Gina Frangello. I'm in awe. -Jennifer Pastiloff, author of On Being Human Truth is a scarce commodity in books about sex and marriage--I mean the real truth, the hard stuff. Blow Your House Down is a truth bomb. Writing with the immediacy of fiction and the acuity of criticism, Gina Frangello gives us her harrowing, luminous, and very real story of love, marriage, and aftermath. It's a huge act of generosity to write these intimate and risky things that make other women feel less alone. We are left stunned and consoled. -Claire Dederer, author of Love and Trouble Urgent, subversive, and brave, Blow Your House Down is a pathbreaking feminist manifesto, impossible to put down or dismiss. Gina Frangello tells the morally complex story of her adulteress relationship with a lover and her shortcomings as a mother, and in doing so, highlights the forces that shaped, silenced, and shamed her: everyday misogyny, puritanical expectations regarding female sexuality and maternal sacrifice, and male oppression. It's a story that is not hers alone--though many will prefer to think so--and one that I will not soon forget. -Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game

Author Information

GINA FRANGELLO is the author of Every Kind of Wanting, A Life in Men, Slut Lullabies, and My Sister's Continent. Her short fiction, essays, book reviews, and journalism have been published in Ploughshares, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, HuffPost, Fence, Five Chapters, Prairie Schooner, Chicago Reader, and many other publications. She lives with her family in the Chicago area.

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