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Summary: Tragic and Beautiful at the Same Time
Review: The first time I read this book I was in tears for about fifteen minutes straight! Deborah's painful and achingly beautiful book kept me into it for hours and hours. I only read this book in two days, not because I was bored, because I couldn't stop reading it! This is my favorite book of all time. No author could ever replace this beautiful piece of literature...
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Summary: For fans, this is great!
Review: I am a fan of the Sex Pistols, and fell in love with the movie "Sid & Nancy." However, everywhere I looked, all I could find were discouraging and hateful things said about Nancy, Sid's girlfriend before her death. If you'd like to get some insight on Nancy FIRST-HAND rather than from the press, check this book out. It is very well written and the tales Nancy's mother tells throughout are interesting.
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Summary: Haunting
Review: October of 1978, Nancy Spungeon was murdered. Nobody really knows what happened that night in the Chelsea Hotel. Sid Vicious, bassist for the punk band Sex Pistols, was arrested for her stabbing death, but a few months later he was bailed out of jail, and he promptly overdosed on heroin. He had sent a letter to Nancy's mom, and one of the lines from that letter is: ...and I don't want to live this life. Deborah Spungeon wants to set the record straight to not only parents of murdered children, but also to the numerous "fans" of the infamous groupie to the Sex Pistols. Nancy was not a normal child. Before the days of ADD, ADHD, and Ritalin, there was Deborah trying to raise three kids. The oldest was Nancy: violent, screaming, brilliant, and horrible. Doctors refused to admit there was anything wrong with her. After numerous treatments, facilities, and special schools, she was finally beyond anyone's control and free. While following punk bands on tour in England, she hooked up with Sid and started a romance of doing any drug they could get their hands on. Deborah could only watch from the distance. Highly recommended to parents, educators, psychologists.
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Summary: PRAYERS FOR THE SPUNGEONS -- LOVING ACCOUNT OF A LOVED ONE
Review: Nancy Spungeon was born in tormet. A cyanotic baby, she screamed incessantly. She was an extremely active young child and seemed to be chronically restless. Nancy's short life was marked by her own inner torment, her restlessness, violence and self destructive behavior. She had good parents who did everything they knew possible to help their child. By the time Nancy was 10 in 1968-1969, she and her parents were receiving regular treatment at a neighborhood clinic. One is shocked at the callousness of clinic staff. Deborah's therapist verbally attacked the people in the group; Nancy's therapist appeared to be patronizing and self serving. The director seemed especially dispicable. He refused to provide the Spungeons with a diagonsis or even his own honest opinion. It seemed stupid to say Nancy's behavior was normal when it was obviously everything but. The Spungeons obviously needed help and guidance, not dodges and ploys. It was also inexcusable for the staff to blame them. That was stupid and useless. Matters reached a critical head when Nancy was 11. She walked out of school during the first week and was subsequently expelled. (One wonders why her therapist was so adamant that she attend school the day in question. From Deborah's account, Nancy was plainly in no condition to go). She attacked her mother with a hammer when the latter refused to take her to a museum. Fortunately for the Spungeons, the Devereaux Institute accepted Nancy in February of 1970. She made extraordinary progress the first term there, but once returned that fall [1970] her behavior became a litany of runaway episodes, self injurious behavior and terrorizing her parents and siblings. She began abusing drugs during this period and sold her mother's jewelry to support her habit. Nancy's behavior deteriorated in Devereaux. Two memorable blunders on the part of school staff was shocking. Nancy had tried aborting herself at 14, cut her wrists and run away numerous times. School staff suggested graduating her at age 15. Deborah encouraged the school to keep Nancy another year, which enraged Nancy to the point of further self-destructive behaviors. How could the school even consider graduation for a 15-year-old who lacked the maturity and stability for college or a regular job? One also wonders why D.I. refused to let the Spungeons hospitalize Nancy for a month to seek a "vitamin treatment program" in 1973. Why would any instition bar parents from trying different approaches to help their child? Aren't they on the same side? Nancy was graduated at age 16. She enrolled in a college in Colorado and was expelled for drug abuse and theft. Devasted, Nancy retreated into further drug use and self abuse. Unable to control her, Frank and Deborah arranged to have her move to Manhattan where they covered her rent and grocies. Nancy spent the next year and a half clubbing and go-go dancing to make ends meet. She was also abusing drugs. In 1977, Nancy decided to join her club pals in London, where she met Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. There they had a rather questionable relationship. Sid apparently abused Nancy and on one occasion nearly severed her ear. During the fall of 1978, Nancy and Sid returned to the U.S. They stayed in the Spungeon house, where they were clearly out of their element. Zonked and emaciated, they were clearly at the tail end of their game. Sid appeared to be unable to participate in conversations and he spent his time drunk and wasted with Nancy. The pair left for a hotel where Sid stabbed Nancy to death with a hunting knife on October 12, 1978. The cruelty of the press and of entertainers about the pair's death was appalling. Nancy had good parents who clearly loved and cared about her. They got little help from the "experts" and were often left to box shadows and fend for themselves. Deborah's account is a loving, gritty, heartwarming and heartfelt one; it is an entreaty to really care about people who are obviously suffering from internal travail. Each time I read this book, I pray for the Spungeons.
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Summary: There's a Nancy Spungen in all of us
Review: I first read this harrowing account of Nancy Spungen's troubledlife in the late 1980s. It struck a chord with me because Nancy and I were born the same year. We could not have been more different - I was an easygoing child, a relatively calm teenager and a conforming adult. There was no drug use, no punk rock scene, no promiscuity and no outward rebellion in my life. But somehow when I read about Nancy, I recognized myself. There's a Nancy inside me, somewhere, and I've squashed her down and hidden her. But she's there, as she is in almost everyone I know. I have read the book many times over the last twelve or so years, and just recently bought a new copy. Now that I have children, I read the book thinking that but for the grace of God, I could be a mother enduring the same suffering as Deborah Spungen. I hope that Nancy has found in death the peace that she never achieved in life.
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Summary: Truly touching and heart warming
Review: This book is my favorite book and I admire Deborah for her courage. I would never have been able to deal through all of the pain and anguish that she did. I cried my eyes out when I read it, so it was very touching and I highly recommend it. It made me so sad that Nancy could never find happiness in her short, sad life. Her life brought out people's anger in life and death. If you are looking for a touching story, filled with pain, misery and courage... AND I DON'T WANT TO LIVE THIS LIFE is definetely for you.
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Summary: very honest and touching
Review: I read this book about 3 years ago and it got me started on a long list of books dealing with the sex pistols and that whole era of music. The writing in this book is very honest and heartfelt. It made me feel very sad for Nancy as well as for her family. Many people (who knew both of them and were around at the time) do not believe that Sid killed Nancy rather that a drug dealer did (either way a sad ending for both of them) I recommend this book highly.
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Summary: and i dont want to live this life
Review: I read this book many years ago. I no longer own a copy, but i just ordered a new one. This book fits a relative of mine to the tee. No one can diagnose this girl correctly and it's just been one ordeal after another. I cannot wait to read this book again and pass it on to other family members. It may not help her diagnosis, but it may help our family in trying to cope with a situation. For us, it's a metter of her parents denial, not so much the doctor. I think the doctor has pinpointed it, but my relatives parents do not want to face the facts. I'm going to send them this book also.
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Summary: EX-PUNK FROM LONDON
Review: 'AND I DON'T WANT TO LIVE THIS LIFE' is truly excellent and I haven't hardly been able to put it down. I am 42 now but I was living in London at the time punk was 'all happening' - (1976/1977). I lived near the World's End (where Malcolm McLaren's 'SEX' shop was) and I worked in the Beaufort Markets in the Kings Road selling 50s gear. I was a punk drummer and I had my own band. I am now the mother of a 20 year old daughter. I have been through SO much of what is described in the book with her. Deborah Spungen and her family went through so much in the 20 years that Nancy was alive and I feel so much empathy and sympathy for them all. I heartily recommend this book to everyone - parents and teenagers alike. Deborah pulls no punches in this book. As a parent I can empathise and as an ex punk who lived a similar life as Nancy I know that I'm amazed that I got out of their alive.
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Summary: Must read for all moms or moms-to-be
Review: This is a truly amazing and heartbreaking account of Nancy Spungen's life. Deborah Spungen's narrative is both candid and gripping; this is the kind of book you won't want to put down. On one level, this is an accurate portrayal of one mother's struggle to raise an unexpectedly violent and difficult first child and keep that child from harming her other children, which is why I strongly recommend that EVERY mother read it. On another level, this book gives Nancy Spungen the voice she never got. From the media's accounts, the infamous Nancy Spungen was a troublemaker who deserved nothing but bad press - in this book, you see the beautiful and troubled human being she really was. You also see what really happens to a family when one member gets negative notoriety; how the press are quick to air a family's dirty laundry and misrepresent facts to sell a story. One of the first lines in the book encapsulates it's purpose - when Debbie wants to scream to the world "Nancy didn't deserve to die this way, to be treated this way. You don't understand her. She was LOVED." Debbie Spungen is so thorough and honest in her telling of her daughter's story that the relationship Nancy had with Sid is given no excuses but clarity. Debbie reveals a now legendary poem Sid wrote for Nancy, unveiling his sensitivity and a devotion to Nancy that the media did not acknowledge. In a poignant confession, Debbie admits she herself could have written that poem, thus adding to her confusion about the man accused of killing her daughter. The triumph in the story is that Debbie has devoted her life to speaking out on behalf of murder victims. Debbie acknowledges that the life she was given was one she never expected to have, but she embraces it as a tribute to Nancy, to victims without a voice and her own surviving spirit. I know many people who identify with Nancy have read this book and found comfort in it but at the same time, it is also a very important book for ANY mother to read. For those of us who adore Nancy (those of us who never knew her but feel we did through this story), we are grateful to Deborah Spungen for allowing us this fair and haunting look at her beautiful daughter.
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