The Mighty Franks: A Memoir
Written by Michael Frank
Narrated by Michael Frank
4/5
()
About this audiobook
This program is read by the author.
A psychologically acute memoir about an unusual Hollywood family by Michael Frank, who "brings Proustian acuity and razor-sharp prose to family dramas as primal, and eccentrically insular, as they come" (The Atlantic)
“My feeling for Mike is something out of the ordi - nary,” Michael Frank overhears his aunt telling his mother when he is a boy of eight. “It’s stronger than I am. I cannot explain it . . . I love him beyond life itself.” With this indelible bit of eavesdropping, we fall into the spellbinding world of The Mighty Franks.
The family is uncommonly close: Michael’s childless Auntie Hankie and Uncle Irving, glamorous Hollywood screenwriters, are doubly related— Hankie is his father’s sister, and Irving is his mother’s brother. The two families live near each other in Laurel Canyon. In this strangely intertwined world, even the author’s grandmothers—who dislike each other—share a nearby apartment.
Strangest of all is the way Auntie Hankie, with her extravagant personality, comes to bend the wider family to her will. Talented, mercurial, and lavish with her love, she divides Michael from his parents and his two younger brothers as she takes charge of his education, guiding him to the right books to read (Proust, not Zola), the right painters to admire (Matisse, not Pollock), the right architectural styles to embrace (period, not modern—or mo-derne, as she pronounces the word, with palpable disdain). She trains his mind and his eye—until that eye begins to see on its own. When this “son” Hankie longs for grows up and begins to turn away from her, her moods darken, and a series of shattering scenes compel Michael to reconstruct both himself and his family narrative as he tries to reconcile the woman he once adored with the troubled figure he discovers her to be.
In its portrayal of this fascinating, singularly polarizing figure, the boy in her thrall, and the man that boy becomes, The Mighty Franks will speak to any listener who has ever struggled to find an independent voice amid the turbulence of family life.
Michael Frank
Michael Frank is the author of What Is Missing, a novel, and The Mighty Franks, a memoir, which was awarded the 2018 JQ Wingate Prize and was named one of the best books of the year by The Telegraph and The New Statesman. His essays, articles, and short stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The Yale Review, Salmagundi, The TLS, Tablet, and other publications. The recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives with his family in New York City and Camogli, Italy.
Related to The Mighty Franks
Related audiobooks
Body Leaping Backward: Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Secret Life of Dorothy Soames: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Light Years: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ladysitting: My Year with Nana at the End of Her Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Films of Endearment: A Mother, a Son and the '80s Films That Defined Us Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nobody's Son: A Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Heart of Glass Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Notes from the Henhouse: On Marrying a Poet, Raising Children and Chickens, and Writing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll At Sea: A Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI'll Build a Stairway to Paradise: A Life of Bunny Mellon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSome Go Home Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChanel Bonfire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Miss Aluminum: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk from the Middle East to the Lower East Side Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Angel in My Pocket: A Story of Love, Loss, and Life After Death Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Glass Eye: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Box of Darkness: The Story of a Marriage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Price of Illusion: A Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I Don't Have a Happy Place: Cheerful Stories of Despondency and Gloom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Happy Families: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Into the Valley Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Fortunate Age Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Miss Fortune: Fresh Perspectives on Having It All from Someone Who Is Not Okay Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool: A True Love Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Cousin Maria Schneider: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Personal Memoirs For You
I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Making It So: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: My Year of Psychedelics: Lessons on Better Living Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Counting the Cost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Woman in Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wishful Drinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night: New translation by Marion Wiesel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Summer of Fall: Gravity is a bitch, but I'm still standing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Mormon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dad on Pills: Fatherhood and Mental Illness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pageboy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5See You on the Way Down: Catch You on the Way Back Up! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yes Please Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Mighty Franks
2 ratings0 reviews