Common Sense Media Review
By Regan McMahon
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Searing memoir of growing up in troubled family offers hope.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 12+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Read
What's the Story?
Actress-author and mental health advocate Mariel Hemingway recalls her childhood growing up in a famous family with a legacy of suicide, alcoholism, and mental illness. From infancy, Mariel recounts feeling like an INVISIBLE GIRL, desperate for her parents' attention and her two older sisters' affection. Her alcoholic parents are always partying and arguing, and family members escape by various means -- oldest sister Muffet through drugs and flights of fancy (it turns out she's a schizophrenic and at one point does a stint in a mental institution), Dad through fishing in addition to drinking, and middle sister Margot through an eating disorder, drugs, and eventually a career as a model and actress, for which she changes the spelling of her name to "Margaux." When Mariel's 4 (in 1965), the family moves from California to Idaho, where her famous author grandfather, Ernest Hemingway, shot himself to death four months before she was born. Mariel feels awkward and isolated in school -- and is teased for being a rich kid whose name is actually on the school building. But she finds solace in nature, hiking with her dog, skiing, and riding horses. (Of nature she notes: "No one can make you feel stupid when you're outside in nature by yourself.") Her life changes when her father has a heart attack (but survives) and again when her mother gets cancer (a disease she lives with for 20 years), and Mariel cares for them in ways beyond what she'd already been doing all her young life. The story goes through her first movie role -- a break thanks to Margaux -- while she's still in high school.
Is It Any Good?
Invisible Girl covers territory common to many young-adult novels -- alcoholism, mental illness, suicide -- but it's all the more harrowing knowing this was the author's actual experience. Mariel Hemingway begins the narration in the baffled voice of a very young kid, and she basically maintains that voice throughout, puzzled by the bizarre behavior of the surrounding adults (she often seems like the only sane person in the family) and confusing, sometimes hurtful situations she mostly navigates on her own.
Kids will relate to the typical growing-up dilemmas and incidents, such as being the target of sibling or classmate rivalry, having a crush, and holding hands with a boy for the first time. And readers from troubled families can find hope in the fact that Hemingway survived hers and didn't repeat the familial pattern of substance abuse. The author not only offers a raft of "Where to Go for Help" resources at the back with website addresses and phone numbers (such as Alanon, Anxiety and Depression Association of America, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the International OCD Foundation, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and so on) but also introduces each topic area in the context of her own experience. She advises kids that if they're going through something like she did or feeing the same way not to keep it to themselves; there are adults and organizations that can help.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about alcoholism and depression. Why do they seem to run in families? How can a person break a family pattern?
How does suicide hang over the Hemingway family? Have you read any books by Ernest Hemingway?
Does being part of a famous family seem to help or hurt Mariel when she's growing up?
Book Details
- Authors :
- Genre : Autobiography
- Topics : Arts , Family Stories ( Siblings ) , Animals
- Book type : Non-Fiction
- Publisher : Regan Arts.
- Publication date : April 7, 2015
- Publisher's recommended age(s) : 12 - 18
- Number of pages : 147
- Available on : Nook, Hardback, Apple Books, Kindle
- Last updated : September 30, 2025
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