Small Fry

Vogue's Best Books of the Year, 2018

Sunday Times' Best Memoirs of the Year, 2018

A New York Times Book of the Year

New Yorker Book of the Year



A frank, smart and captivating memoir by the daughter of Apple founder Steve Jobs.



Born on a farm and named in a field by her parents - artist Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs - Lisa Brennan-Jobs's childhood unfolded in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley. When she was young, Lisa's father was a mythical figure who was rarely present in her life. As she grew older, her father took an interest in her, ushering her into a new world of mansions, holidays and private schools. His attention was thrilling, but he could also be cold, critical and unpredictable. When her relationship with her mother grew strained in high school, Lisa decided to move in with her father, hoping he'd become the parent she'd always wanted him to be.

Small Fry is Lisa Brennan-Jobs's poignant story of a childhood spent between two imperfect but extraordinary homes. Scrappy, wise and funny, young Lisa is an unforgettable guide through her parents' fascinating and disparate worlds. Part portrait of a complex family, part love letter to California in the seventies and eighties, Small Fry is an enthralling book by an insightful new literary voice.



Lisa Brennan-Jobs lives in Brooklyn and Small Fry is her first book.



A remarkable book...a gorgeously written evocation of 1980s California.



Beautifully written...The sum of such memories might have been maudlin but Brennan-Jobs is rescued by unsentimental honesty, literary grace and wry humour.



Brennan-Jobs is a deeply gifted writer...[Small Fry] has that defining aspect of a literary work: the stamp of a singular sensibility. In the fallen world of kiss-and-tell celebrity memoirs, this may be the most beautiful, literary and devastating one ever written.



Small Fry isn't about eliciting sympathy or seeking revenge. Instead she tries to get to the bottom of a relationship mired in awkwardness and unpredictability.



A memoir of uncommon grace, maturity and spare elegance.



An epic, sharp coming-of-age story from the daughter of Steve Jobs...an exquisitely rendered story of family, love, and identity. Brennan-Jobs benefits from her father's story, but her prose doesn't require his spotlight to shine.



This sincere and disquieting portrait reveals a complex father-daughter relationship.



As clear-eyed, amusing, honest, unsentimental and sad as any memoir I've read in years. No other book or film has captured Steve Jobs as distinctly as this one has.



Here is a literary coming-of-age memoir of the highest order, the story of a child trying to find her place between two radically different parents, identities and worlds. Compassionate, wise and filled with finely-wrought detail, Small Fry is a wonder of a book, and Lisa Brennan-Jobs is a wonder of a writer.



A gorgeous, compelling work of art and a dazzling coming-of-age story. This is a lovely, sweetly intimate portrait, a story told through the eyes of a daughter whose father struggled with his own origins - and who almost became the father she hoped he would be.



Writing with enlightened panache and dry humor, she's as keen a witness to the ambience of the Bay Area in the 1980s and 1990s...as she is to the behavior of the adults around her... Never having felt safe in any of her father's houses, Ms. Brennan-Jobs has built her own house in memoir form... It's alive in all the rough edges of its feelings, and it's home.