Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2022
320 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Paperback Original.
Publication Information
A moving and offbeat story of unlikely friendship, the cost of ambition, and what happens when the things you've always run away from show up on your doorstep.
To most, Maggie Rowe appears to live on Easy Street. Her stylish home is in a fashionable Los Angeles neighborhood. She has a kind husband who makes her laugh. And after years of struggle, she is finally making a name for herself in Hollywood. But the agreeable, confident persona she presents to the world often feels like a deception to Maggie, who's long grappled with mental illness and feelings of inadequacy.
Enter Joanna Hergert, a neurodiverse middle-aged woman who lives with her elderly mother. Maggie's husband, Jim, introduces her to the pair after meeting them at a local charbroiled chicken franchise. Over the next several years, she forms a friendship with Joanna and her mother—despite Joanna's robust romantic fixation on Jim. What begins as a mild curiosity soon blooms into a complicated and intimate friendship that will challenge Maggie to confront her mental health issues and the trade-offs she's made to live life on her own terms.
Engrossing, moving, and wickedly funny, Easy Street is a midlife coming-of-age buddy comedy about embracing the strength of the families we fashion, finding peace with the choices we make, and, above all, learning to be compassionate with ourselves.
"Rowe is a cleareyed, disarmingly honest, wonderfully funny narrator of this trial by fire, which almost seems to be a 'test' of the sort the hero faces in a fable or a Bible story, ironically set in one of the most self-involved places on Earth. If you've ever gotten in over your head trying to be a good person, get ready to wince, laugh, and scream. A great read." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] funny, touching memoir...Rowe's bluntness about her mental health struggles, combined with her account of her imperfect but enduring dedication to Sunny and Joanna, makes for a heartstring-tugging and charming story. Readers will find it hard to put this one down." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An unexpected story of friendship...This is a compelling exploration of the obligations and limits of privilege." - Booklist
"Similar to Truman Capote, Maggie Rowe writes like the most fascinating person at a dinner party who captivates the table with a strange, twisty, funny tale about the human condition. It's incredibly difficult to describe losing your mind and Rowe does it masterfully and unflinchingly. Her tenderness and insight make you root for everyone, especially her. (Spoiler alert: kindness and love light the darkness.)" - Nell Scovell, author of Just the Funny Parts: And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking into the Hollywood Boys' Club
"Easy Street had me laughing out loud from the very first sentence. Maggie Rowe's captivating storytelling is not only a reflection on her personal life experiences, it is an enlightening exploration of the human mind. Shockingly honest, brilliantly funny, and imbued with deep wisdom and a touch of Buddhist philosophy, Easy Street is a masterful memoir." - Annaka Harris, New York Times bestselling author of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind
This information about Easy Street was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Maggie Rowe has written for television shows including Arrested Development and Flaked. For film, she penned the screenplay, with Andersen Gabrych, Bright Day: An Exposé of Hollywood's Fastest Growing New Religion. Rowe is the author of Sin Bravely: A Memoir of Spiritual Disobedience, an NPR Best Book of the Year.
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