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Sep 09, 2024 By Frank Valish

Moon Unit Zappa’s memoir, Earth to Moon, is infuriating. Moon Unit, the first child of Frank and Gail Zappa, and the eldest Zappa child to brothers Dweezil and Ahmet and younger sister, Diva, who initially rose to a modicum of fame with the 1982 curio single, “Valley Girl,” which she recorded with her dad, has decided to bear all about her upbringing and subsequent life growing up with Frank and Gail. And it’s a frustrating journey through her childhood with absent, self-centered, self-absorbed, and not especially loving parents.

More than half of the book details Moon’s life until her teen years. She is a precocious youngster encouraged in her pursuits by Frank and Gail, whose parenting style might be best described as laissez faire. Frank walking around in the nude. Frank often not being around. Frank holed up in his studio working. Gail trying to put together the pieces of a family life defined by an absent, often cheating husband, and Moon trying to make sense of it all.

After “Valley Girl,” Moon pursues some acting jobs, studies with a guru, and attempts to make a life for herself apart from her parents. However, she remains emotionally tethered, especially to Gail, who she feels like she’s supported throughout all the family’s travails, despite getting little from her mother in return.

Moon details her marriage to Matchbox Twenty’s Paul Doucette and how she became a parent herself only to have her daughter suffer an illness that nearly took her life, the trauma over which ended up derailing her marriage. Her father passes away, leading to more heartache with her mother over that which her father left behind. Her mother finally passes, leading only to more heartache with her siblings over how to handle the estate and who should be able to make decisions about Frank’s musical legacy. Lawsuits are filed. Moon finds herself on the wrong end. More heartache ensures. Moon attempts to mend fences, without much success.

Surely the other players in this drama have their own sides to the story, but Earth to Moon is Moon Unit Zappa’s. And it is one of a talented, empathetic, kind, creative, and artistic woman who spent her life trying to live up to impossible ideals, to please people who could not be pleased, and to find love from the unlovable. The book is wonderfully written, well-paced, and engaging throughout. A memoir worth anyone’s time, Zappa fan or not, Earth to Moon is the story of family. A dysfunctional one, sure. But isn’t such a thing more universal than not anyway? Moon Unit’s story will tug at your heartstrings and make you feel for her (and for your own particular familial story) in a very clear and poignant way. (www.harpercollins.com)

Author rating: 7.5/10