Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints

About the Book

When Simon Doonan sat down to write a memoir, he discovered he had no memories of cuddly family times or romantic Hallmark moments -- turns out most of his memories are notably nasty. Birthday parties? No recollection. But his mother's dentures flying out of her mouth when she sneezed and skittering across the kitchen floor? A vivid mental image that still brings a smile. In his subversively funny memoir, Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints, Simon revisits his formative years and the defiantly eccentric, lovably odd family he calls his own, showing us how nasty memories can be very, very good.

Long before he became a celebrity in his own right -- as a bestselling author, as a style arbiter on national television, and as the window display genius of Barneys New York -- Simon Doonan was a "scabby knee'd troll" in Reading, England. In Nasty, he returns to the working-class neighborhood of his youth and chronicles the misadventures of the Doonan clan in all their wacky glory. Readers meet his mum, Betty, whose gravity-defying, peroxided hairdo loudly proclaimed her innate glamour; his father, Terry, an amateur vintner who turned parsnips into the legendary Ch�teau Doonan; and his grandfather D.C., a hard-drinking betting man who plotted to win his fortune by turning "wee" Simon into a jockey.

Fearing he would fall victim to the insanity that runs in his family or, worse, the banality of suburban life, Doonan decamps with his flamboyant best friend Biddie to London. There they hope to find the Beautiful People -- those glamorous creatures who luxuriate on floor pillows and amuse each other with bon mots -- and join their ranks. Instead, he encounters various ladies of the night, kidney stones, punks, law enforcement officers, phantom venereal diseases, public humiliations, and camps, vamps, and scamps of all shapes and sizes. Doonan continues his bumbling pursuit of the fabulous life only to learn, in the end, that perhaps the Beautiful People were the ones he left behind.

Infused throughout with good humor and informed by Doonan's keen eye for the ridiculous, Nasty reminds us never to take life too seriously. This is a wickedly good memoir from one of today's most dazzling literary humorists.

About the Author :
Simon Doonan is the bestselling author of Wacky Chicks and Confessions of a Window Dresser. In addition to his role as creative director of Barneys New York, Simon writes the "Simon Says" column for The New York Observer. He frequently contributes observations and opinions to myriad other publications and television shows. He is a regular commentator on VH1, the Trio network, and Full Frontal Fashion. He lives in New York City with his partner, Jonathan Adler, and his Norwich terrier, Liberace.

Review :
""Nasty" is wickedly funny. Simon Doonan has an ear and an eye for sublimely bizarre details that will make readers laugh out loud."

-- Candace Bushnell

"At last: a childhood memoir that's about coming to terms with fabulousness rather than incest or binge drinking. Who knew that Simon -- or anyone -- could write about growing up in a gray corner of England with as much wit, charm, and dead-on smarts as he brings to his chronicles of the luxe life in Manhattan?"

-- Graydon Carter

"That Simon Doonan is a writer with a flair for the clever aphorism and a trenchant wit is no surprise. But that he is also capable of telling a tremendously moving tale is something of a revelation. It's all here: the inexorable bonds of family; Swinging London in all its Rita Tushingham glory; the calamities of AIDS..."Nasty" is a book for anyone who has ever yearned to transcend their own beginnings. In other words, if you were ever younger than you are now, you must read this book."

-- David Rakoff, author of "Fraud"

"Fabulously entertaining ....Visionary fashion director of Barney's department store, Doonan "(Wacky Chicks, " 2003, etc.) is known for taking the ordinary and spinning it into the fantastic ... Doonan recalls the challenges of his childhood with love and respect and, where that isn't possible, bemusement ... A kick, a hoot, a truly wonderful read, with loads of down-and-dirty details about characters who are way more interesting that those dull Beautiful People Doonan was so all afire to find."

"--Kirkus Reviews"

"Beneath the hilarious camp writing in Simon Doonan's memoir, "Nasty, " I was touched by his wistful yearning for the life of glamour, glitz, and Beautiful People, which he ultimately achieved."

-- Dominick Dunne