I Will Be Complete

I Will Be Complete is the best memoir I've read in years. It's likely the best memoir published in years. Gold's a novelist and this book reads like the best fiction. It's exciting, beautiful, and clear-eyed in a way most memoirs aren't. Oh, and you'll never forget this charming, intelligent, unique narrator. - Darin Strauss, author of HALF A LIFE and CHANG AND ENG

Gold's heartbreaking, brave book deals with his tangled, troubled and troubling relationship with his tempestuous mother and, with insightful introspection, he reveals how it has affected all his other relationships. It's a shocking read, describing a shattered childhood, a complicated adolescence and an adulthood that finds him happy and whole. - Book of the Month, Psychologies

Striking images are strewn through Gold's memoir . . . heartbreaking . . . Gold's [language] is often fresh, dynamic, aching. - TLS

We expect the story of a boy and his mother ought to go a certain way. I Will Be Complete goes in ways you'd never expect. The people shatter, reassemble themselves, and shatter all over again. The prose is crystalline, hard as real diamonds, flashing, revealing. The story is simple, just a boy and his mother's long disintegration, but the journey is darkly complicated, heartbreaking, beautiful as hell - Mark Childress, author of CRAZY IN ALABAMA

An extraordinary account of an extraordinary life. Gold captures with stunning clarity the emotional chaos he grew up in, and that made him the brilliant writer he is now. - Lev Grossman, author of THE MAGICIANS

In this dazzling memoir, Glen David Gold shows us the dark side of the Auntie Mame myth. Raised by an unreliable bohemian mother in 1970s California, Gold follows the trail of damage she leaves, marking his adolescence and young manhood, until he decides he must choose between being 'complete' and emotionally whole. Beautiful and deft, witty and searing, like a playful song with a persistent bass line of unresolved grief. I can't stop thinking about it. - Janet Fitch, author of The Revolution of Marina M. and White Oleander

Gold delivers an engaging work of nonfiction that shows the author in a continuous battle to reconcile axioms with personal truths. As readers accompany him through his tumultuous relationships, unsuccessful jobs, or awkward interactions with his father, most will enjoy the ride. A strong memoir that oozes with the excitement of a life well-lived-and well-analyzed. - Kirkus Reviews

Glen David Gold is one of the best storytellers working today. He could write about anything and make it gripping. As it turns out, he also has one hell of a story to tell. - Joseph Fink, author of WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE