The Mighty Franks: A Memoir

The Mighty Franks: A Memoir
Michael Frank

A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEARA NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEARA story at once extremely strange and entirely familiar – about families, innocence, art and love. This hugely enjoyable, totally unforgettable memoir is a classic in the making.‘My aunt called our two families the Mighty Franks. But, she said, you and I, Lovey, are a thing apart. The two of us have pulled our wagons up to a secret campsite. We know how lucky we are. We’re the most fortunate people in the world to have found each other, isn’t it so?’Michael Frank’s upbringing was unusual to say the least. His aunt was his father’s sister and his uncle his mother’s brother. The two couples lived blocks apart in the hills of LA, with both grandmothers in an apartment together nearby.Most unusual of all was his aunt, ‘Hankie’: a beauty with violet eyelids and leaves fastened in her hair, a woman who thought that conformity was death, a Hollywood screenwriter spinning seductive fantasies. With no children of her own, Hankie took a particular shine to Michael, taking him on Antiquing excursions, telling him about ‘the very last drop of her innermost self’, holding him in her orbit in unpredictable ways. This love complicated the delicate balance of the wider family and changed Michael’s life forever.

Copyright (#ulink_4109d306-f63f-533a-aab4-8a765541f73a)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

First published in the United States in 2017 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Copyright © 2017 by Michael Frank

Cover image shows author aged 6

Designed by Jonathon D. Lippincott

Michael Frank asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material: Excerpt from “Make Your Own Kind of Music.” Words and music by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Copyright © 1968 Screen Gems–EMI Music Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, Tennessee 37219. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

Excerpt from “Our House.” Words and music by Graham Nash. Copyright © 1970 (renewed) Nash Notes. All rights for Nash Notes controlled and administered by Spirit One Music (BMI). All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Music.

Epigraph to Maxine Kumin’s poem “Looking Back in My Eighty-First year” by Hilma Wolitzer. Courtesy of Hilma Wolitzer.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008215224

Ebook Edition © 2018 ISBN: 9780008215217

Version: 2018-04-27

Dedication (#ulink_7015f93b-5b70-5d7e-9a7d-15da033469f6)

To my parents and (how not?) my aunt

and in memory of my uncle

Epigraph (#ulink_2947a2de-56cf-556b-9023-c5b72a57fd9d)

Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.

(Everything changes, nothing is lost.)

—Ovid, Metamorphoses

Contents

Cover (#u5b27a761-420f-5ce0-8b68-093c9753b9e8)

Title Page (#u922fc115-099a-5175-b88f-15e4d7bce8c1)

Copyright (#uf2adc7aa-72e3-59dd-83d4-629534a24e90)

Dedication (#u2a144f0c-c557-5583-bc09-2c3ed9a8d9a6)

Epigraph (#u91f771ba-5b00-577a-ad08-995de6fff130)

Overheard (#u21dd46a1-fe73-5556-a593-079b571155ad)

PART I (#ub2379fa7-b6ca-5561-8a7f-971353b78a0f)

1. The Apartment (#u2881befd-6e7d-53c8-b2c6-1ce3cb18dd4c)

2. Ogden, Continued (#u10caebfe-ba25-57b9-aecb-64399ce6287c)

3. On Greenvalley Road (#ue9b00093-07f9-5367-971d-743341bfde2a)

4. Safe House (#litres_trial_promo)

PART II (#litres_trial_promo)

5. My Uncle’s Closet (in My Aunt’s House) (#litres_trial_promo)

6. Off the Hill (#litres_trial_promo)

7. Five Places, Six Scenes (#litres_trial_promo)

8. Last Room (#litres_trial_promo)

9. Goodbye to the Closet (#litres_trial_promo)

10. Fall and Decline (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)