Coming Clean - Hardcover

Miller, Kimberly Rae

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0544025830 ISBN 13: 9780544025837

Publisher: New Harvest, 2013

Synopsis

Kimberly Rae Miller is an immaculately put-together woman with a great career, a loving boyfriend, and a beautifully tidy apartment in Brooklyn. You would never guess that behind the closed doors of her family’s idyllic Long Island house hid teetering stacks of aging newspaper, broken computers, and boxes upon boxes of unused junk festering in every room—the product of her father’s painful and unending struggle with hoarding.

In this dazzling memoir, Miller brings to life her experience growing up in a rat-infested home, hiding her father’s shameful secret from friends for years, and the emotional burden that ultimately led to her suicide attempt. In beautiful prose, Miller sheds light on her complicated yet loving relationship with her parents, which has thrived in spite of the odds.

Coming Clean is a story about recognizing where you come from and understanding the relationships that define you. It is also a powerful story of recovery and redemption.

About this title

About the Author

Kimberly Rae Miller is a writer and actress living in New York City. Her writing on food, exercise, and positive body image has appeared in Condé Nast’s blog Elastic Waist, Yahoo’s Shine, Social Workout, and in Figure magazine. Additionally, Kim writes about New York living, celebrity gossip, and shopping for CBS Radio and CBS New York. In 2010, Kim was featured in Katharine Sise’s breakthrough career guide Creative Girl: The Ultimate Guide for Turning Talent and Creativity into a Real Career. She blogs at TheKimChallenge.com.

Reviews

An only child to loving parents who were such chronic hoarders that they had to flee their over-stuffed Long Island house rather than face cleaning it, actress and journalist Miller delineates her harrowing childhood and secretive home life. Miller's bus driver father, a brilliant, however emotionally remote man, collected papers and broken electronics, while Miller's government-employed mother was a twin whose untreated childhood scoliosis left her shrunken and with a low sense of self-worth, although fiercely devoted to her daughter. Home life spelled a weird combination of obsession and inertia—collected stuff and unused purchases were piled so high that little room was left for the family even to eat or sleep or use the bathrooms; and filth and mold invited rodents As a child Miller realized her family wasn't like other people's families with tidy, presentable homes; far from it. A fire destroyed one home when she was in second grade, while the large house they moved into was soon rendered similarly uninhabitable, so that Miller never invited anyone home and had to adopt a decoy house to be dropped off at by friends. Eventually she went to college at Emerson in Boston where she kept a clean living space, as she did when she later moved to L.A. and New York City. The reader senses in this horrific story that Miller is still tiptoeing around her family's dirty secret and hardly revealing the half of it. Agent: Mollie Glick, Foundry Literary + Media. (July)

*Starred Review* A few-day cleanup of a junk-filled home on an episode of Hoarders is nothing compared to what Miller went through growing up. This memoir recounts a childhood in which it was impossible to shower in her house or cook in the kitchen, of being bitten by fleas and listening to rats rustle at night. The hoarding surrounds everything else in the Millers’ life, papers encroaching on her parents marriage, parenting, and friendships. The despicable mess comes with shame, guilt, and often-thwarted attempts at redemption. With a poignant child’s perspective, wishing for normalcy, Miller remembers the attitudes and self-involved thoughts of a child and presents them compellingly. Although she has every right to be bitter, she doesn’t let that define her emotions toward her parents, and love and family togetherness are clearly evident. This searing tale of the damage caused by the disease reflects Miller’s deep consideration of her experience; it is a deeply affecting, remarkably thoughtful, and well-reasoned book, yet the horror is always there. One can only admire Miller’s courage in coming clean. —Bridget Thoreson

Edition details

• Publisher: New Harvest
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0544025830
• ISBN 13: 9780544025837
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256