When the World Didn't End

April 1, 2023
When celebrated screenwriter and director Turner (American Psycho) was a baby, her mother, Bess, joined the conservative commune known as the Lyman Family, which resulted in mother and child being separated, leaving Turner to be shuffled around the various Lyman compounds across the country. Young Turner becomes fixated on charismatic, mercurial Jessie, cult leader Mel Lyman's primary partner. When Turner befriends Jessie's daughter, Daria, she gets to travel with Jessie and enjoy the perks of being a favorite. But then Bess and her paramour, FP, abruptly leave the Lyman Family, and Turner and her younger sister, Annalee, get expelled. Turner longs for the halcyon days with the Lyman children, especially once FP starts sexually abusing her when she turns 12. Turner remains laser-focused on returning to the Lyman Family, but eventually this desire is replaced by a drive to escape FP's horrific abuse. Often drawing on her diary entries, Turner keeps her memoir centered on her youthful perspective, making for a harrowing, emotional read as well as an invaluable chronicle of growing up in a cult.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2023
A Hollywood actor, screenwriter, and director reflects on her upbringing in a doomsday cult in the 1970s. Anchored by diary entries, Turner's memoir vividly recalls her unconventional upbringing in the cultlike Lyman Family. She was not raised by her mother, Bess, but by other group members who home-schooled her and the other community children. The isolated, hierarchical Lyman commune was led by charismatic "Lord" Mel Lyman, who preached about the dangers of everyone outside their community. He, alongside "Queen" Jessie, reigned over a network of extension communities, all rooted in the knowledge of an impending apocalypse. In January 1975, the Lyman followers were instructed that the global population of "World People" would be extinguished and only their group would ascend in a spaceship to live on Venus. When the ship never materialized, Turner, as the oldest of six children and having already been shuffled among various homes, was relocated to the East Coast with her excommunicated mother, who had abandoned the group altogether. Though the author relished the camaraderie of cooking, farming, cleaning, and being a kid with the other Lyman children, she became more confused and less enchanted once the culture shock of living outside the clan kicked in. Still, she continued writing in her journal, mostly as a means of self-expression. "There have been points in my life when keeping a record of what was happening to me felt like the only power I had," she writes. The author's prose is reflective, vivid, and confessional, a rich combination full of striking imagery. Turner found much to reconcile as she entered early adulthood, and she even considered foregoing college to rejoin the Lyman Family. In a memorable closing sequence, the author expresses her disillusionment with the outdated gender hierarchy still in place on the farm. A moving portrait of a bizarre childhood written with emotional nuance and bittersweet deliverance.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 1, 2023

Screenwriter/director/actress Turner (Charlie Says) states at the beginning of her memoir that it attempts to simply document the events of her childhood as they happened, as well as the feelings she experienced at the time, without letting her adult perspective color her descriptions. She has done this successfully, recalling growing up in the Lyman Family Commune until the age of 11, when her mother chose to leave and take her children with her. Approximately half of the book describes Turner's early childhood in the 1970s with "the Family," as they were called, whose members believed they would be taken by spaceships to the planet of love, Venus. The other half of the book describes her adolescence as a "world person" after leaving the Family. Turner's diary entries are also interspersed throughout the memoir, which gives readers a clear insight into what she was thinking and feeling at the time. They show readers that physical and sexual abuse were present in Turner's life, when she was in the commune as well as when she was out in the world. VERDICT Will have wide appeal for general audiences, particularly those who enjoyed memoirs such as Tara Westover's Educated and Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox.--Heather Sheahan

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 12, 2023
American Psycho screenwriter Turner recalls an often-traumatic childhood in this affecting memoir, which covers her life from ages six to 18 in the 1970s and ’80s, when she and her family were members of a cult centered on the apocalyptic teachings of Mel Lyman. Lyman prophesied that on Jan. 5, 1975, the world would end, but members of “the Family”—many of whom lived together on a single property in Los Angeles—would be transported to Venus in an alien spaceship. When the aliens didn’t appear, Lyman explained that some of his followers were not spiritually ready, and Turner took that to heart, believing that her imperfections were what held the Family back (“I can’t remember not living with the shame of it, and the mystery”). Eventually, she moves to New York City with her mother to join up with a Family sect there, after which she slowly comes to understand the depth of the Family’s deception. Turner excels at making the cult’s far-fetched beliefs and practices legible to outsiders, illustrating her mindset through occasional contemporaneous diary entries: “All we did all day in school was read Melvin’s poems and memorize them. It is very hard to say them correctly.” Her journey away from the cult and toward a successful screenwriting career is stirring and inspiring. This will stay with readers long after they turn the last page. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency.