A New York Times Notable Book
When Sarah LaBrie’s mother is found on the side of the highway, convinced she’s being chased by FBI agents, Sarah is forced to return to Houston and confront the legacy of mental illness in her family. As she tries to figure out what triggered her mother’s psychotic break, she also begins to investigate how this legacy shaped the lives of her grandmother and great-grandmother and how it will affect her future.
No One Gets to Fall Apart has been praised as “stunning,” “brilliant,” and “a triumph of literary perseverance.” It was named a New York Times Editors’ Pick and Notable Book of 2024 and one of the best memoirs of the year by NPR, Elle and Esquire.
“Urgent and imaginative. . . . No One Gets to Fall Apart makes for an engrossing read, its hectic scenes held together by a psychically unmoored narrator whose wit and honesty make us trust her anyway.” — New York Times Book Review
"No One Gets to Fall Apart is a sensitive and courageous debut by a talented writer seeking a deeper understanding of herself and her past." — Nicole Chung for Esquire
“A memoir that faces failure head-on....[LaBrie] does a remarkable job presenting the ways in which our health care system has failed the women in her family...A bracing look at a writer’s troubled past.” — Kirkus Reviews
"I had a compulsive relationship with No One Gets to Fall Apart. Once I opened this brilliant memoir, I needed to finish it. When I wasn't reading, I was thinking about Sarah LaBrie's story, turning over in my mind her most devastating observations about motherhood, madness, and creativity. This book is stunning, one of the best memoirs I've read in a decade. No One Gets to Fall Apart deserves a place alongside modern classics like Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle and Tara Westover's Educated." — Susannah Cahalan, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire and The Great Pretender
“Somehow I missed much of the late-fall hype surrounding the release of Sarah LaBrie’s No One Gets to Fall Apart (Harper)—the “Best Books of Fall” plug from Oprah’s website, the favorable New York Times review, the Vogue Q&A—and I’m glad I did. It’s the kind of book that’s best to come upon by accident, like hitting it off with someone at an otherwise deadly cocktail party. LaBrie’s memoir is actually several stories intertwined: a story of growing up amid some very tough circumstances in Houston, a coming-of-age story, a story of professional success, and a meditation on race and gender in the current moment. It’s the tale of a person who had to learn—in the hardest way possible—to readjust the lens through which she sees herself and her past." — Mimi Swarz, Texas Monthly
"This is a brilliant memoir about what we inherit and what we create; what disappears and what remains. Full of intelligence and rueful humor, No One Gets to Fall Apart is a triumph of every kind of literary perseverance."— Lorrie Moore author of I am Homeless if This is Not My Home
“With remarkable insight and frankness, TV writer and librettist Sarah LaBrie mines her family history of mental illness in her ambitious debut memoir… No One Gets to Fall Apart examines family dynamics, mental health, Blackness, literature, friendship, the #MeToo movement and more as LaBrie illustrates her desire to embrace her own emotions, even as the temptation to suppress them looms.” — BookPage
“Extraordinary. . . . LaBrie brings a piercing astuteness and sensitive voice to the dilemma raised by the writer’s desire to tell a story.” — Los Angeles Times
“LaBrie's spellbinding prose is a metaphysical experience: cinematic, poetic, philosophical, and wholly stunning. If psychiatric disability has impacted your life, or if you've ever been lonely, or if you enjoy having exceptional writing light up your brain, this book is an essential gift. It's that rare gem that somehow holds dazzling intertextual craft and prodigiously tender honesty in equal turn, to sublime effect. This memoir will never leave me.” — Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love and Tampa
"[A] spellbinding debut.... With unflinching honesty (‘I am so terribly sick of cannibalizing my life for art’) and lyrical prose, LaBrie elegantly captures the grunt work of self-acceptance.” — Publishers Weekly
"LaBrie’s intimate and vivid chronicle is haunting in its sorrow and beautiful in its daring and hope.” — Booklist
“No One Gets to Fall Apart forms a remarkable meditation on inheritance, race and mental illness, the mother-daughter relationship and the blurry line between madness and artistic brilliance.” — Kristin Martin for NPR
"This memoir was an eye-opening account of mental illness and family dynamics. LaBrie allows readers into deeply personal moments while shedding light on more widespread themes that stem from her family’s past as well as LaBrie’s own creative drive." — Debutiful, "10 noteworthy debut books"
“LaBrie’s writing is phenomenal…elegant and eloquent." — Bethanne Patrick @thebookmaven on her top non-fiction reads of 2024