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Don't Call Me Home: A Memoir Hardcover – May 2, 2023

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 206 ratings

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“Don’t Call Me Home is about madness and love. Alexandra tells the best stories about her extraordinary childhood as she travels the world with her mother Viva. Wit and wisdom wrapped and bound with love.” --Debbie Harry

“Alexandra Auder’s
Don’t Call Me Home is thrumming with life, in all its absurdity, vividness, and gunk. I literally laughed and cried, and cheered hard throughout for our intrepid narrator, who has gifted us an incomparable tale.”--Maggie Nelson author of The Argonauts and On Freedom

A moving and wickedly funny memoir about one woman’s life as the daughter of a Warhol superstar and the intimate bonds of mother-daughter relationships


Alexandra Auder’s life began at the Chelsea Hotel—New York City’s infamous bohemian hangout—when her mother, Viva, a longtime resident of the hotel and one of Andy Warhol’s superstars, went into labor in the lobby. These first moments of Alexandra’s life, documented by her filmmaker father, Michel Auder, portended the whirlwind childhood and teen years that she would go on to have.

At the center of it all is Viva: a glamorous, larger-than-life woman with mercurial moods, who brings Alexandra with her on the road from gig to gig, splitting time between a home in Connecticut and Alexandra’s father’s loft in 1980s Tribeca, then moving back again to the Chelsea Hotel and spending summers with Viva’s upper-middle-class, conservative, hyperpatriarchal family of origin.

In
Don’t Call Me Home, Alexandra meditates on the seedy glory of being raised by two counterculture icons, from walking a pet goat around Chelsea and joining the Squat Theatre company to coparenting her younger sister, Gaby, with her mother and partying in East Village nightclubs. Flitting between this world and her present-day life as a yoga instructor, actress, mother, wife, and much-loved Instagram provocateur, Alexandra weaves a stunning, moving, and hilarious portrait of a family and what it means to move away from being your mother’s daughter into being a person of your own.
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From the Publisher

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Wit and wisdom wrapped and bound with love — Debbie Harry

I literally laughed and cried, and cheered hard throughout... An incomparable tale — Maggie Nelson

Wonderful, complicated, and vivid... A book to be treasured. — Hilton Als

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The daughter of Warhol superstar Viva (and older sister of actor Gaby Hoffmann) recounts a chaotic and colorful childhood at the Chelsea Hotel, home to New York’s artistic demimonde in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Auder writes with total honesty and humor about her mother’s antics—and her own. Neither an accusation nor an absolution, Don’t Call Me Home is a stunner."— Kirkus Reviews

“The daughter of Andy Warhol’s fave muse, Alexandra, fondly remembers growing up in the infamous Chelsea Hotel. With a mother with a vivacious attitude and a father with workaholic tendencies, childhood was unpredictable and inconsistent. Sometimes, her mother would drag her up and down the country or leave her at her conservative grandparents’ house for weeks. Alexandra doesn’t recall much normalcy in her childhood years, only chaos and mayhem like raising her baby sister or spending nights with her mother at East Village clubs. In her debut novel, the singer, songwriter, and actress describes the absurd, bizarre but ultimately charming moments of her extraordinary childhood.”
— Cosmo

Don’t Call Me Home is fully cooked, wicked in its humor and often heartbreaking.”— The New York Times

“Gutsy…impossible-to-put-down…[Auder’s] childhood memories sparkle.”
--Associated Press

"Don’t Call Me Home is an ode to hard-won resilience, life in the margins, and a fraught, entangled, but deeply loving relationship between a mother and daughter.” -- Vulture

“[Auder’s] ability to hear her own voice through the noise of Viva’s is the key to this book’s charm and success…Don’t Call Me Home is very funny. Auder has the sense of humor of a person who became an adult as soon as they were born. In other words, she is a natural writer. And her honesty in not knowing the solution to a problem like Viva is comforting in its familiarity.”
--The Washington Post

“Don’t Call Me Home is a love letter to an era of New York City that has since passed; but more importantly, it is a story of the messy and imperfect yet loving missteps that bond a mother and daughter over a lifetime.”
—Vogue

“Don’t Call Me Home is about madness and love. Alexandra tells the best stories about her extraordinary childhood as she travels the world with her mother Viva.  Wit and wisdom wrapped and bound with love.” 
--Debbie Harry

“Alexandra Auder’s
Don’t Call Me Home is thrumming with life, in all its absurdity, vividness, and gunk. I literally laughed and cried, and cheered hard throughout for our intrepid narrator, who has gifted us an incomparable tale - one notable for its singular portrait of a place, sensibility, and time, and for its unruly contributions to the timeless problem of how we become ourselves, survive, and thrive.”
--Maggie Nelson author of The Argonauts and On Freedom 
 
"I think this book is hearty and breathtaking. Life is a pure risk in this telling of growing up in an avant garde family. Alex Auder is the most natural organic page turner of a writer – because her visual memory feels flawless and as a kid she was already everywhere and the opportunities for experience endless and psychedelic and yet she was completely awake in it and grows up not sad. Kind of thrilled, in fact, and that’s the hearty and breathtaking part."
--Eileen Myles, poet and author of Chelsea Girls
 
“In
Don’t Call Me Home, Auder renders her unique mother-daughter relationship with feeling, clarity, humor, and honesty. Through her adventures in the city and her unusual family, Auder also gives us a fascinating and vivid cultural history of New York in the 1970s and 1980s. Don’t Call Me Home is lively, wise, moving, and wonderful reading.
—Lynne Tillman, author of Men and Apparitions and Mothercare

"Gut-wrenching and gut-busting in equal measure,
Don’t Call Me Home is a moving and hilarious memoir that portrays fascinating, unique people caught in circumstances and dynamics many of us might recognize. As Alexandra Auder demonstrates, you can’t pick your parents, but maybe after a lot of struggle you can choose to come to terms with who they were, what they passed onto you, and what else you might need to become."
Sam Lipsyte, Author of No One Left to Come Looking for You

"There is much to envy in Alexandra Auder's wonderful, complicated, and vivid memoir, including the bohemianism that made her. In our increasingly corporatized world, Auder's portrait of her large extended family, primarily of her mother, the legendary performer and artist, Viva, makes one long for those days when art making wasn't so much about a career, as an aspect of self-expression. And joy. A book to be treasured."
—Hilton Als, author of The Women and My Pinup

"Vibrant.... Auder's vivid writing illuminates a deep and sparkling trove of storytelling riches.... Auder makes the most of her magnificent mess of material, celebrating her bohemian upbringing and her crazy mother in style."
Kirkus, starred review

“Enthralling…Funny, bracing, and compulsively readable, Auder’s memoir resists juicy gossip in favor of hard-won truths. This story of fraught but unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters is a gem.”
Publishers Weekly

“As the daughter of one of Andy Warhol's superstars, Alexandra Auder was born into a life of art, excitement, and exceedingly blurred boundaries. Here, she tells the incredible story of what it was like to grow up surrounded by some of the 20th century's most creative minds, and how a world that spawned a legendary moment in culture wasn't exactly designed to be child-friendly.”
-Town and Country

“This memoir of [Alexandra’s] roller-coaster childhood, growing up at the Chelsea Hotel, making the scene as a teen in ’80s Manhattan, regularly visiting her mother’s wealthy, bickering family, is the best kind of train wreck.”
--Oprah Daily

“Auder’s frustration comes through loud and clear, but so does a deep and abiding love, and she manages to reflect on her chaotic and unconventional upbringing with a refreshing lack of prejudice and judgment. In many ways, it seems, her mother raised her right.”
--Booklist

“In this sparkling debut, a grown-up Auder tells those million stories with delicious prose, sharp satirical humor, and cheeky whimsy. A seasoned raconteur, she has a way of plopping us into her life with a clear voice that relays the complex and sometimes heartbreaking travails of sharing a claustrophobic apartment within the walls of New York’s infamous Chelsea Hotel with a much younger sister and a single, struggling-artist mother in the ’70s and ’80s. It’s a casually hilarious, decidedly feminist recounting of a family of women told with an unflinching eye”
--Shondaland

“Don't Call Me Home reads acutely; Auder's descriptive account is visceral and not withholding. However, it is not a simple indictment of negligent parents or an airing of dirty laundry. Auder holds space for her mother as a woman in an era freshly one generation removed from women's traditional roles. The memoir is reflective, looking back at certain life events from the perspective of the girl who lived it, and has grown up to become a working mother and wife herself.”
--New York Journal of Books

About the Author

Alexandra Auder is a writer and actress. Born in New York City to mother Viva, a Warhol superstar, and father Michel Auder, an award-winning filmmaker who directed Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol. Alexandra has been a featured character in HBO’s High Maintenance and has acted in the films of Wim Wenders and Jodie Foster, among others.
She resides in Philadelphia with her two children and husband, filmmaker Nick Nehez, with whom she co-produces and collaborates.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking (May 2, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593299957
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593299951
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.29 x 1.11 x 9.27 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 206 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
206 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book engaging and entertaining. They appreciate the poignant narrative style and vivid portraits of real people. The memoir is described as life-affirming and a memoir of every mother and daughter.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

9 customers mention "Readability"9 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and entertaining. They describe it as a personal story with an interesting subject matter.

"...Interesting and perceptive on what it's like to grow up with a mother who has no boundaries to speak of, and with many valuable thoughts about..." Read more

"The book as a whole is an interesting read, peppered with memories of New York City that evoke nostalgia...." Read more

"...Wow..read this memoir! It is such a delight, a cosmic delight!" Read more

"This book was a compelling read, a page-Turner that kept me coming back for more!..." Read more

6 customers mention "Narrative style"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the narrative style poignant and beautiful. They appreciate reading about real people and how they grew up. The book is life-affirming, with truthful insights into love, connection, and separation. Readers also mention it's interesting and perceptive on what it's like to grow up with a mother.

"...Interesting and perceptive on what it's like to grow up with a mother who has no boundaries to speak of, and with many valuable thoughts about..." Read more

"...The love and humor and self awareness in this book will keep me thinking about it for a long time." Read more

"I love reading about real people and how they grew up...." Read more

"Love this memoir. It's the memoir of every mother and daughter. Love you Viva. I had your picture hanging in my college room in the 70s...." Read more

3 customers mention "Visual quality"3 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's visual quality. They find the portraits vivid and earthy, capturing the time and culture depicted.

"...And then the writing itself is extraordinarily vivid and beautiful, especially in memoir narrative..." Read more

"...The portraits it paints are vivid and earthy, and the time in our culture portrayed made me nostalgic. In short, I loved it!" Read more

"I couldn’t put this book down! Hilarious, poignant and beautiful...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2023
    This is a stunning memoir - I read it in two sittings and it's going to stay with me. There's the obvious interest of the characters and setting, which will attract many readers. And then the writing itself is extraordinarily vivid and beautiful, especially in memoir narrative (the book's held together by a present-day spine that's an effective way of making the story work as a book but that can't be quite as compelling as the episodes it helps to frame). Interesting and perceptive on what it's like to grow up with a mother who has no boundaries to speak of, and with many valuable thoughts about mothers and daughters. It reads as a powerful complement to a book like Patti Smith's JUST KIDS, which I think unduly idealizes the bohemian lifestyle; the romantic ideal of life as and for art is looking pretty threadbare and dirty in Alex's story, and I found this account of her childhood and adolescence utterly riveting. Highly recommended.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2023
    Stayed up two nights in a row to finish this masterpiece. As much as Alexandra had a wildly unique childhood growing up in the Chelsea with a Warhol superstar like Viva for a mother, there is also something profoundly relatable about the experience of loving your mother so much and at the same time absolutely cringing at their ability to grate on your nerves and sanity. The love and humor and self awareness in this book will keep me thinking about it for a long time.
    6 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2023
    The book as a whole is an interesting read, peppered with memories of New York City that evoke nostalgia. Alex’s story unveils the reality that is her mother’s life after underground fame. She shares her personal stories which are enhanced with the New York City backdrop.

    Then as she shares a few memories as an 18 year old, the book hurriedly finishes without even touching on her adult life. It’s as if she had a deadline and summarized a few events into one chapter. This is really only her sharing experiences about her time with her mother.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2024
    I love reading about real people and how they grew up. Exposed to fascinating movie stars and famous people who were just regulars in the story of their lives
    One person found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2023
    Love this memoir. It's the memoir of every mother and daughter. Love you Viva. I had your picture hanging in my college room in the 70s. How could I have known the similarities I would have with your daughter Audra and how wonderful a writer she would turn out to be. Wow..read this memoir! It is such a delight, a cosmic delight!
    5 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2023
    This book was a compelling read, a page-Turner that kept me coming back for more! It was entertaining and moving, familiar and exotic at the same time. The portraits it paints are vivid and earthy, and the time in our culture portrayed made me nostalgic. In short, I loved it!
    One person found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2023
    This is one of my favorite books and I’ll be gifting it to everyone. It is not simply a snapshot of a weird and chaotic and glamorous and messy time in NYC, it is straight to the heart truth about love and connection and separation. All of it. Bravo!
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2023
    Interesting subject matter, but I thought it was presented in a boring way. Storytelling and writing could have been much better.
    3 people found this helpful
    Report

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  • Edith
    5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELENTE!!!!
    Reviewed in Mexico on December 5, 2024
    DE LOS MEJORES LIBROS QUE HE LEIDO ESTE AÑO