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Wednesday, April 7, 2010
title: Never Tell Our Business to Strangers
author: Jennifer Mascia
published: 2010
pages: 383
genre: memoir
rated: 3 1/2 out of 5
Never Tell Our Business to Strangers is journalists Jennifer Mascia's memoir about growing up an only child who ends up finding out her parents were living a double life. Jennifer's father John Mascia, whom she thought was a carpet cleaner, was selling drugs, was associated with the mafia and at one time served prison time for murder. The first time the FBI came for her dad, Jennifer was just five years old. To calm her down, Jennifer was told that her dad was acting in a movie.
Her mom went from shopping sprees and wearing designer clothes, to maxing out credit cards then filing for bankruptcy. Jennifer and her parents were always on the move. While her father was in prison, she and her mom would stay with family and friends, moving from New York, to Florida to California.
Her dad kept his cash hidden in a hole below the carpet at home and soon Jennifer found out that both her parents used false names and social security numbers. She also found out that she and her parents were living as fugitives on the run for five years. When Jennifer finally found out about her family's secrets, she was stunned and hurt.
I had a family, however imperfect, and not that long ago. I had a life, albeit one that doesn't remotely resemble the one I'm living now. Where there was once a house full of laughter and argument and cooking smells there is now nothing, just a furnished reverie that exists only in my memory. Sometimes I wonder if my time with them was real.
I enjoyed reading Never Tell Our Business to Strangers. I found this to be an interesting memoir. You can tell by reading it that Jennifer loves her parent and misses them. You can also see that her parents wanted to keep her sheltered from the awful truth. I did feel that the book could have been a bit shorter, there's parts where she ventures off into details of events and dialogue that I didn't think were necessary.
About the author:
Jennifer Mascia graduated from Hunter College in 2001, and in 2007 she received an M.S. from Columbia University ’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has spent the past three years as the nightside news assistant on the Metro desk of The New York Times.
Special thanks to Tony Viardo @ Blue Dot Literary for making this possible.
