Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to Celadon Books and Libro.fm for gifting me a review copy of Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett.

What a ride…it’s true what they say about fact being stranger than fiction sometimes. Mikel’s story is heartbreaking, bizarre, and hopeful all rolled together.

Mikel (frontman for band, The Airborne Toxic Event) was born into an infamous Californian cult, which started as a drug rehabilitation center but turned violent and intense by the time he was born. The children were separated from their parents into a ‘school’ which was basically an orphanage. Mikel’s mother managed to get him and his brother out, but their free existence was one of poverty and abuse (both physical and emotional).

The book explores Mikel’s relationships, his sense of family and his own sense of self after such a tumultuous upbringing, and was truly moving while also being completely riveting. The writing is beautifully descriptive and poetic at times, without ever being over the top.

I predict this book will quickly be the topic of many a book club and find itself on the best-seller list before long. The audiobook is narrated by the author, who does a fantastic job. If you like memoirs…and even if you don’t, I recommend grabbing a copy of this one! Get the audiobook by clicking the button below, or grab a physical copy here.

Synopsis:

Hollywood Park is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country’s most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer.

We were never young. We were just too afraid of ourselves. No one told us who we were or what we were or where all our parents went. They would arrive like ghosts, visiting us for a morning, an afternoon. They would sit with us or walk around the grounds, to laugh or cry or toss us in the air while we screamed. Then they’d disappear again, for weeks, for months, for years, leaving us alone with our memories and dreams, our questions and confusion. …

So begins Hollywood Park, Mikel Jollett’s remarkable memoir. His story opens in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country’s most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader’s mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult’s “School.” After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. But in many ways, life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic.

In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician.

Hollywood Park is told at first through the limited perspective of a child, and then broadens as Jollett begins to understand the world around him. Although Mikel Jollett’s story is filled with heartbreak, it is ultimately an unforgettable portrayal of love at its fiercest and most loyal.

"A story of fierce love and family loyalty. This moving and profound memoir is for anyone who loves a good redemption story." - Good Morning America, 20 Books We're Excited for in 2020