bonniereads777 's review for:

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated by Alison Arngrim

5.0

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Alison Arngrim (Nellie Oleson from Little House on the Prairie) talks about her time as Nellie and shares very difficult details of her childhood and being sexually abused. Despite the fact that she shares hard topics in this memoir, she also talks candidly about what it was to work with Michael Landon, meeting Melissa Gilbert when they were both children, and why nobody liked Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson). She shares the details of what it was like to work with Katherine MacGregor and Richard Bull. She details her fabulous friendship with her tv husband, Steve Tracy (Percival) and his devastating death from AIDS.

I read this several years ago, and after reading a very bad memoir by another actress, I decided to read this one again. I remember it as one of the best memoirs I have ever read, and I was right. This book is delight. Despite a lot of hard topics in this book, Arngrim is real, warm, honest, and funny. She brings her time on Little House alive. She is also very candid and straightforward about her abuse at the hands of her brother and how she now helps victims of child sexual abuse. Her description of Michael Landon is loving but honest, and her tales of life on the set are captivating.

I would recommend this to fans of Little House on the Prairie and anyone who wants to read a good memoir.