Blow Your House Down

"An unforgettable book." —K.W. Colyard, Bustle

“Searingly honest and compulsively readable, this memoir serves as a post–#MeToo feminist dictum about the deeply complex and multilayered emotional and sexual lives of women. With humor and a no-holds-barred self-inspection, the author illuminates these layers and reminds us that 'the clean reduction of a woman to any prime number is always a lie.' Uncompromisingly fearless in its candor, this memoir/feminist manifesto is a powerful account of a woman’s self-acceptance that deserves a place among the best literary memoirs of the last decade. Frangello’s groundbreaking testimony sets itself apart.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“[A] raw, red-hot memoir . . . She shares her experiences as a wife, mother, parental caregiver, literary professional, and medical patient, of a woman who paints within the lines, until she vividly, wildly doesn’t. How fulfilled is a woman allowed to be? In this gutsy, dramatic feminist manifesto, Frangello recounts the cost of eschewing security to choose the utter necessity of love, of being more tomorrow than she is today.” —Booklist

“My bet for breakout of the year. The Chicagoan’s memoir takes on gender expectations and marital affairs in such a brutal, self-lacerating candor, you wonder who should play her in the movie." —Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

"I’m a sucker for the sort of story arc in Blow Your House Down: Woman follows the rules. Woman becomes wife, mother. Woman is 'good' in all things. One day, following crisis or unrelenting ennui, woman realizes that her life feels hollow or binding, so she sets about changing said life (sometimes in explosive fashion). I love this story enough in novel form, but better yet, Gina Frangello unravels it in all its reckless, transgressive, messy glory in this memoir about womanhood and misogyny, sex and joy." —Literary Hub, One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year

“Too many memoirs fall into the trap of mistaking martyrdom for nobility, sacrifice for bravery; they float on the still-shiny surface rather than excavating into the murk. Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down is not that kind of memoir. Instead, it is fierce and violent, a rampaging storm—a breathtaking, luminous reminder of the wreckage we are capable of making of our own lives." —Kristin Iversen, Refinery29, One of the Best New Books of the Year

"In this searing memoir, novelist Frangello charts the spectacular highs and devastating lows of her midlife with extraordinary candor . . . Frangello describes this bold and tumultuous period of her life in intimate and remarkable detail, and despite the tumult celebrates her own resilience. This unapologetic account both moves and fascinates." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) 

"With courage and grace, Gina Frangello's Blow Your House Down invites us to consider the many ways women sacrifice their own needs and the residual trauma this inflicts. Told in a voice that is fiercely original, in a style wholly her own, Frangello’s memoir lays bare the lengths one woman will go to in order to reclaim her most cherished desires and dreams." —Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime

“Compelling, honest, and thought-provoking, Gina Frangello’s memoir is an inspired addition to her astounding body of work.” —Academy Award-winning actress, Charlize Theron

“I don’t know anyone who can write like Gina Frangello. I’m in awe.” —Jennifer Pastiloff, author of On Being Human

"Truth is a scarce commodity in books about sex and marriage—I mean the real truth, the hard stuff. Blow Your House Down is a truth bomb. Writing with the immediacy of fiction and the acuity of criticism, Gina Frangello gives us her harrowing, luminous, and very real story of love, marriage, and aftermath. It's a huge act of generosity to write these intimate and risky things that make other women feel less alone. We are left stunned and consoled." —Claire Dederer, author of Love and Trouble

“Gina Frangello’s Blow Your House Down is everything a memoir should be: fascinating, beautifully written, unwilling to turn away from terror and joy while also acknowledging how often they intersect and turn into one another. Frangello is a truth-teller who refuses to cop to an easy happy ending, shining a light on the platitudes and false promises of our myopic understanding of what constitutes a “good life.” Blow Your House Down redefines a genre that, in recent years, has become too synonymous with concepts like “bravery” and “inspiration”—but the act of writing in this nuanced, intelligent way doesn’t make Frangello brave; it makes her an artist, one of our finest working today. This book burns down our old way of looking at the world's oldest genre and makes way for something bold and new.” —Emily Rapp Black, author of The Still Point of the Turning World

“In Blow Your House Down, Gina Frangello has created a form, a structure of her own out of necessity: the need to tell all the stories, especially the ones we feel cannot be told. In the process, she gives us a new language through which we might come to some sort of reckoning with ourselves. This book is an excavation of the deepest and most complex corridors of the heart.” —David L. Ulin, author of The Lost Art of Reading

“Urgent, subversive, and brave, Blow Your House Down is a pathbreaking feminist manifesto, impossible to put down or dismiss. Gina Frangello tells the morally complex story of her adulteress relationship with a lover and her shortcomings as a mother, and in doing so, highlights the forces that shaped, silenced, and shamed her: everyday misogyny, puritanical expectations regarding female sexuality and maternal sacrifice, and male oppression. It’s a story that is not hers alone—though many will prefer to think so—and one that I will not soon forget.” —Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game

"Gina Frangello can always make me think and laugh; she's also one of the very few authors who's made me cry. Blow Your House Down is searing, honest, heartbreaking, heart-mending, and a hell of a wild ride. Frangello says things women aren't allowed to say, even to ourselves.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers

“Gina Frangello’s Blow Your House Down blazes open a radical new portrait of a woman’s life with dazzling honesty and breathtaking beauty. Threading through the terrors of breast cancer and caretaking a dying father, navigating the end of a longterm marriage and the burst of new love, Blow Your House Down reveals the epic journey of one woman’s life and body. This book is a heart beating, not beaten. This book is a mighty heartsong.” —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge and The Chronology of Water