Mean Baby by Selma Blair

Selma Blair is known for her roles in Cruel Intentions and in Legally Blonde . She is also an advocate for the multiple sclerosis community. But before all of that, Selma was known best as a mean baby. In a memoir that is as wildly funny as it is emotionally shattering, Blair tells the captivating story of growing up and finding her truth.

The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. With her mouth pulled in a perpetual snarl and a head so furry it had to be rubbed to make way for her forehead, Selma spent years living up to her terrible reputation by biting her sisters, lying spontaneously, getting drunk from Passover wine at the age of seven, and behaving dramatically so that she would be the center of attention.

Although Selma went on to become a celebrated Hollywood actress and model, she could never quite shake the periods of darkness that overtook her, the certainty that there was a great mystery at the heart of her life. She often felt like her arms might be on fire, a sensation not unlike electric shocks, and she secretly drank to escape.

Over the course of this beautiful and, at times, devasting memoir, Selma lays bare her addiction to alcohol, her devotion to her brilliant and complicated mother, and the moments she flirted with death. There is brutal violence, passionate love, true friendship, the gift of motherhood, and, finally, the surprising salvation of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis.

In a voice that is powerfully original, fiercely intelligent, and full of hard-won wisdom, Selma Blair’s Mean Baby is a deeply human memoir and a true literary achievement.

My Verdict: I love good memoirs and this one is good. Blair tells us at the beginning of the memoir that she used two names -- Selma and Blair -- interchangeably as she grew up. For me, this was metaphorical as she spent most of her book trying to find her identity rather than running from herself.

She describes her childhood in a series of anecdotes. While they sometimes seem like notes one might use to tell a story rather than an actual story, together they accumulate power, especially those about her mother whom she loves deeply albeit often dysfunctionally.

Alcohol is center stage in this memoir as well. At one point she describes how alcohol

has made her unable to remember the details of many assaults: “I left my body and other people entered it.” Long before her body was attacked by M.S., it was attacked by boys and men.

Blair spent most of her life battling her alcoholism. This part of the book is heart wrenching. She went to treatment several times and learned much from the program of Alcoholics Anonymous as well, but unfortunately that was limited because once she became more famous her anonymity was compromised. Blair is now sober and she understands that she used alcohol to treat the emerging pain of her illness; it seems to me that she used it to deal with a lot of emotional pain from other sources as well. It is clear that the things she learned from AA and from rehab have helped her to process that illness and life itself.

The end of the book chronicles Blair’s life with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), including her commitment to speaking openly about her experience of the illness, which has included a punishing stem-cell transplant. I loved that she did not engage in any type of pity party regarding her illness, although it would have been difficult to blame her if she had done so. Instead, her discussion of her disease is uplifting and hopeful.

If you enjoy audiobooks, this is a good one as the author narrates her own book. I give this memoir 5 stars.