‘Small Fry' More Than A Steve Jobs Story

- 

The ghost of Steve Jobs haunts “Small Fry,” the memoir by his first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs. He looms larger than life even on the pages where he is missing — and he missed a lot. But we already knew that. We also knew that he was not a particularly nice person, that he was a genius, a charismatic visionary, the co-founder of Apple Computer.

But the book is more than the missing piece of the Steve Jobs puzzle. It’s a story of a girl growing up in 1980s and ’90s California trying to fit into two very different families and not belonging in either. It’s the story of her single mother trying to keep it together and often not succeeding. It’s the story of a family that is as imperfect as every family, things complicated by wealth, fame and, in the end, illness and death.