The Grass Is Never Greener Over There

GLORIA FALLON is a comedy writer and co-author of I Hate This Place: The Pessimist?s Guide to Life with her brother Jimmy Fallon. She has been a staff writer for Someecards and a contributor to US Weekly?s Fashion Police, and her writing has appeared in New York and Jane, as well as on websites including McSweeneys, Mommyish, Crushable and MSNBC.com. She lives in Larchmont, NY with her family.

A hilarious, 80s-infused memoir about growing up as a Brooklyn transplant in upstate New York and her large, wacky Irish extended family. Gloria Fallon had a less-than-normal childhood growing up with a family she describes as "functioning lunatics." When other kids were opening their lunchboxes to find PB&Js, she was opening hers to find family photos wrapped in a handkerchief, both of which her mom thought she?d need because she?d miss them so much during the school day. If you lived with the Fallons, you?d miss them, too! Part of a wacky Irish family transplanted from Brooklyn to Saugerties, Gloria and her brother Jimmy (of SNL and The Tonight Show fame) could go to bars with the family as early as ten years old, they weren?t allowed to ride their bikes on the "death trap" of a sidewalk (and instead rode in circles on the front lawn). When Gloria started showing signs of OCD, her parents didn?t take her to a shrink, they had her read Dale Carnegie?s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living and write a book report--problem solved. They trained the family dog, Jeff, to ring the doorbell when he wanted to come in. And her high school years were straight out of Freaks and Geeks and Afterschool Specials.      These are stories that will resonate with anyone with a semi-crazy family (Irish or otherwise), who grew up in the special moment that was the 1980s, or who likes to read voice-drive memoir by women like Jenny Lawson, Mishna Wolff, and Kelly Oxford.