From Scarsdale

From Scarsdale is an evocative and lyrical memoir of a haunted childhood in Scarsdale, NewYork.

With a cancer diagnosis in his early forties, the author is compelled to revisit and resolve the mystery of his family's sadness. The fourth of six children in an Irish-American household distinctly out-of-place in this affluent suburb of New York City, O'Brien grows up in a claustrophobic milieu of secrecy, lies, and mental illness. The turning point in his maturation is an older brother's attempted suicide - an event he witnesses firsthand.

From Scarsdale traces with sensitivity the complex histories and dynamics that lead to this trauma, as O'Brien investigates the psychologies of his parents, themselves the survivors of painful childhoods in Scarsdale. Then, simultaneously disturbed and catalyzed by his brother's depression, and hisown developing obsessive-compulsive disorder, the adolescent O'Brien discovers literature and the theatre as an escape, though it will take years for an actual liberation to occur. In many ways this memoir is that liberation, as his ambition here has been to tell "the story of who I am and where I'm from, with honesty, insight, and something like forgiveness. To try to leave the old place behind."

With the specificity and aching affection of William Maxwell's Ancestors, and the impressionistic, mosaic-like structure of Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family, this book's subject is ultimately, like all memoir, the solace and the conundrum of memory. From Scarsdale is a rare book, uniquely told, and a poignant example of the redemptive power of a true story.

Dan O'Brien is a playwright, poet, librettist, and essayist whose recognition includes aGuggenheim Fellowship in Drama & Performance Art and the UK's Fenton Aldeburgh PoetryPrize. True Story: A Trilogy of O'Brien's plays was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2023,and in 2021 his collection of essays, A Story That Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & OtherTraumas, was published by Dalkey Archive in the US and by CB Editions in the UK. His poetrycollections are Survivor's Notebook, Our Cancers, New Life, Scarsdale, and War Reporter. Hisplays include The Body of an American, winner of the PEN USA Award, the Edward M. KennedyPrize, and the Horton Foote Prize, and The House in Scarsdale, winner of a PEN America Award.He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the actor and writer Jessica St. Clair, and their daughterIsobel.