Kelly Oxford’s memoir reveals life stories with uncompromising honesty
I’m completely enamoured by the truth of people’s lives. While I’m impressed by perfectly crafted fiction, drawn into the well-written worlds of the most practiced authors, I’m completely blown away by people who unabashedly share the awful truths of their lives with the world.
As far as awful truths go, Kelly Oxford potentially has the worst of the worst, but she spills them all in to the pages of her memoir, Everything is Perfect When You’re a Liar, without a second thought. That time she got high and stalked Leonardo DiCaprio across Los Angeles, with $10 in her pocket and no reliable transportation? It’s in there. The time she got drunk at a strip club with her husband and became convinced that David Copperfield could read her mind, while simultaneously receiving a lap dance? She talks about it. The time she, as a teenager, peed her pants while waiting in line at the gas station to buy cigarettes? She holds nothing back.
Granted, Oxford’s first book isn’t necessarily plot driven, nor is it particularly deep. Oxford’s stories are self-lauding, typically drug-induced, and almost too ridiculous to believe. But what saves Oxford from that special narcissistic literary place is her unyielding determination to tell the truth. Oxford doesn’t pretend to have a goal in writing this book; she doesn’t purport to present important life lessons or nuggets of wisdom from which we can learn and grow. Oxford herself tells us, several times, that she is a terrible person – but she is a terrible person who tells the truth about her terrible life.
Everything is Perfect When You’re a Liar works precisely because it skips over the big, important, “life-lesson” moments. Instead, Oxford weaves together several random stories with no greater purpose than to offer a glimpse into her life. From her beginnings as a precocious six-year-old forcing the neighbourhood kids into an illegal reproduction of Star Wars, to a teenage-hood full of pot and wasted promise, to life as a married adult with three children trying to survive the horrors of Disneyland, Oxford’s book has something for everyone.
I might not want to be Oxford when I “grow up,” but I aspire to her level of honesty, and I relish in her levels of sass and snark. Oxford is the kind of friend I’d want to have on my side, and her book is the perfect antidote to the day when I’m lamenting the terrible, horrible moments of life. I might not be perfect, I might not be prepared for the future, and I might spend too much time binge-eating sour cream and onion chips, but I have never peed my pants in line at the gas station while waiting to buy cigarettes.
Above all else, Oxford shows us that if you live your life without apology, there’s no need for perfect, and there’s no need for lies.