Free The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir Author Diana Welch Kindle

know when you sit around with your brothers and sisters talking about your childhood memories And it drives you crazy because you seem to remember events completely differently This memoir, cowritten by four siblings trying to recreate the crazy events of their childhoods, celebrates those different memories.
Of course each child sees their memories through the eyes of a preschooler, or a drug and alcoholaddled teen, or an older college age adult trying

desperately to grab all the pieces of their fragmented family, and pull them back together.


Very moving, VERY relatable, a great book to share, I'm bringing my copy over to my sister this afternoon! I'm wondering if I can inspire mysiblings to take pen to paper and each write our memories of a single event, or perhaps of our deceased father, and compare the memories ourselves! In The Kids are All Right, four siblings produce a fresh take on the familial memoir.
This book billed for lovers of The Liars Club and The Glass Castle stands on its own against these genre standards, not so much for its dramatic subject matter, but more for the unique way it is constructed and the instant affinity the authors inspire.
While peppering every page with nostalgics references, the Welch children Amanda, Liz, Dan and Diana alternate their points of view detailing their losses of virginity, their parents, and almost each other.
No narrator lasts more than three pages and they proceed to correct each others recollections or share the same memory from another point of view.
The result is a memoir which feels more like brothers and sisters recounting family lore at the kitchen table, This brisk conversational read reminds readers the importance of family and describes a deep love that helps these Kids weather affecting tragedy, This collaborative memoir, written from four different points of view, chronicles the ups and downs of the four Welch siblings, three of whom were teens when both their parents died dad from a car accident, mom from cancer and they were forced to make their own way in the world.
On their own, they negotiated places to live, jobs, and their schooling, Even though they were constantly split up, they defined the word "home" to be whenever two or more of them were together one place.
My emotions were all over the place as I sympathized with Amanda's punkrock fueled rebellions, Liz's ruthless pursuit of popularity so no one would think her a poor little orphan, Dan's experimentation with drugs to keep the demons at bay, and Diana's loss of self as the youngest Welch with the fewest memories of her lost parents.


In tone, it reminded me of the sitelinkThe Virgin Suicides or a less dense sitelinkA Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, in terms of exploring the bewildering sense of life continuing to go on, even though this extraordinary and unprecedented thing has happened to your family.
Though each voice is separate, together they form a united "we" of loss and longing that is immediate and will make readers feel like they are intimately connected to the rambunctious adolescent Welch clan.


There is more supplementary material at the The Kids Are All Right's website:
sitelink com/ okay, but I am biased, I wrote this! But WITH my sister, Diana, so I feel like I can brag on her, She really is the most poetic writerthere is a line about the moment Diana, then, learns our mother has died, She says, "I don't remember if I cried, I do remember that I felt like cotton, floating apart from the stem, " One of the many lines that slayed me, My brother, Dan, and my big sister Amanda contributed their own stories too to make this memoirDan is the best raconteurhe made our job of recording and transcribing his stunning memories with their perfect beginning middle and punch line end easy.
And Amanda's voice BOOMS off the page, She is as fiercely strong and opinionated and smart as she seems in the book, So I give them each five, not only for being my siblings, But for being amazing story tellers, I won this book in a First Reads drawing, so the fact that it was free is great! I really enjoyed this book, The memoirs are written by allof the Welch siblings, with each "chapter" in the point of view of one of the siblings, It was sad, funny, heartwarming, and well done, And it really makes my dramatic family seem like a walk in the park! This is an amazing book in numerous ways, First of all, the fact that
four siblings could join together to write a book is impressive,
Their stories, individually and together, are riveting, First they
lose their father to a questionable car accident, Then they discover
that he left their familymillion in debt, Then, only a month after
his funeral, their mom is diagnosed with cancer, They all are tossed
about by changes in addresses and schools and with the needs of their
dying mother, After her death, arrangements for where each of the
kids are going are horrifyingly tangled up the kids range from a
college freshman to ayear old and the family is torn apart for
long years.
People who were supposed to be helping were not, and at
times the kids went through actual abusive situations as they tried
to find a place to belong, at least long enough to survive growing up.

This is the story of a family that circumstances tried to destroy but
love and loyalty saved, It is impressive, affirming and almost
impossible to put down, READ THIS BOOK!!! Had this book for awhile, Should have read it before now, it's a favorite, Love the way the "kids" kept with each other as much as they could, Nice book!!! It was really tough to get into it in the beginning, and honestly I had to skip around until it got interesting further into the book.
By then I thought it was very engaging and I ended up liking the switching point of views between the siblings, Don't judge a book by it's cover because sometimes the title and cover are cool but the book sucks, This is an incredible read, It's heartbreaking and funny and full of so much hurt, loss and pain I had to put it down at times, Considering everything all four kids/adults go through it never reads like a plea for sympathy or a sob story, It's an amazing compilation of work on all the part of all four siblings and their stories are well told and well crafted, As someone who lost a parent at a fairly young age I related strongly to much of what they shared even when the circumstances were entirely different.
“Perfect is boring. ”

Well,certainly wasnt boring for the Welch family, Somehow, between their handsome fathers mysterious death, their glamorous soapoperastar mothers cancer diagnosis, and a phalanx of lawyers intent on bankruptcy proceedings, the four Welch siblings managed to handle each new heartbreaking misfortune in the same way they dealt with the unexpected arrival of the forgottenabout Chilean exchange studenttogether.


All that changed with the death of their mother, While nineteenyearold Amanda was legally on her own, the three younger siblingsLiz, sixteen Dan, fourteen and Diana, eightwere each dispatched to a different set of family friends.
Quickwitted and sharptongued, Amanda headed for college in New York City and immersed herself in ans world of alternative music and drugs, Liz, living with the couple for whom she babysat, followed in Amandas footsteps until high school graduation when she took a job in Norway as a nanny.
Mischievous, rebellious Dan, bounced from guardian to boarding school and back again, getting deeper into trouble and drugs, And Diana, the redhaired baby of the family, was given a new life and identity and told to forget her past, But Dianas siblings refused to forget heror let her go,

Told in the alternating voices of the four siblings, their poignant, harrowing story of unbreakable bonds unfolds with ferocious emotion, Despite the Welch childrens wrenching loss and subsequent separation, they retained the resilience and humor that both their mother and father endowed them withgrowing up as lost souls, taking disastrous turns along the way, but eventually coming out right side up.
The kids are not only all right theyre back together,


From the Hardcover edition, The Welch's are the epitome of resilience, facing several tragedies in their lifetime but still managing to muddle through and become successful adults.
Amanda, Liz, Dan and Diana Welch are orphaned after their father is killed in a car accident inand their mother succumbs to cancer in the winter of.
The children are sent to live with different family friends but manage to stay relatively close through the years, The memoir is told from each of the children's point of view and some of the memories vary slightly in their recollection, The book is at times humorous and heartbreaking but also inspirational, I love the way the kids stuck together no matter what and were always there for one another, Great book,stars!.out ofJust another 'misery' memoir, . . , December,

This review is from: The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir Hardcover
Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program What's this
I read all the positive reviews of this memoir coauthored by the four Welch children whose father died suddenly when they were very young.
Unfortunately, after selecting and muddling through the book, I came away with a very different opinion about it, Mostly who cares Yes, it was sad that the children lost their father, And yes, sad also that he wasn't really rich after all and that the circumstances surrounding his death were questionable, Even sadder was when their mother was diagnosed with cancer, But, ultimately, there was nothing unusual or earth shattering here that made this story or this family any more interesting than any other family that experiences tragedy and inexplicable death.


The truth is, I'm sorry for them, but really this isn't a story that was so unique that it HAD to be told and I wonder why it was published.
I had a struggle to get through it, found it redundant and a bit boring, and didn't like that every child in the family had to tell the same event from his/her own point of view.
Glad they all turned out "all right", however, there are a lot of children who face this type of tragic event and don't go through the selfdestructive, dysfunctional way of dealing with it.
I think anyone who typically reads what I call 'misery memoirs' will recognize The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir as the same sad story they've read before just with a different title and author.


Sorry, but I would pass on this one because, in many cases, your own family history might provide a more interesting book.
This is my "people magazine" book of the seasonan entertaining and easytoread reallife story, And it was a good one, Once again affirming that you can't make it uptruth is definitely stranger than fiction,

Although, as the Welch children point out in their introduction, the "truth" of memory is dependent on many things, age and time and context forever tainting what gets lodged into your brain synapses.
And so each of the four siblings relates their own filtered impressions in alternating selftitled chapters, They also say they consulted others involved in what happened about what they recalled, though it's not clear if that changed what they wrote or how they wrote it.


Together, the four childrens' stories, with ayear age gap from oldest to youngest, fill out into what seems to be a happy ending for all.
After losing their father in a car accident, and their mother a few years later to cancer, they are pretty much on their own to improvise their survival.


A few things stand out yet again in the behavior of humans in these situations, How a few adults stepped up after the Welch parents died, but so many failed in so many ways, How meaning well can't make up for not doing the right thing, How being a white middletouppermiddle class kid with a cushion of money protects you from your illegal and destructive adolescent activities, things that would start a downward spiral to jail, homelessness, addiction, or even death for a child already living on the edge, especially a minority child.
How it's always best for siblings, particularly the youngest and most vulnerable, to stay together, to keep family ties strong when parents are unable to do the job.
Separation should always be the last choice,

I'm still amazed that anyone can expose themselves and the people they know in this way, To their credit, the Welch children give those mentioned in the book a chance to expand or refute their characterization on the The Kids Are All Right's website, and some have taken advantage of the offer.
Interestingly, only one person seems really offended by how they are portrayed, although the woman who comes off worst in the book has not made any comments.
All the accounts are engaging to read and complement the Welch family memories,

In fact the whole website is a nice expansion of the book, with more photos and updates, as well as soap opera segments starring their mother.
Read the book, visit the website, it all works well together, A heartbreaking but funny memoir of four remarkable siblings who weathered the loss of both parents and the misfortunes that followed with amazing strength and love.
I happened to pick this book up at a library sale and I am so glad that it caught my eye, because the memoirs of these four kids are unforgettable, The kids ARE all right!,