Small Fry by Lisa Brennan Jobs is another memoir set in the Silicon Valley, albeit of a different kind.  The book is not about startups or working for Bay area entrepreneurs but rather it is about relationships.  Complex father-daughter and mother-daughter bonds have been skillfully dissected to their bare bones for an outsider to lean in and examine. 

Lisa Brennan Jobs is the first daughter of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple.  Initially disowned by Steve, she later finds herself swinging between two highly polarized worlds inhabited by her parents.  Her mother Chrisann is a hippie artist, always short on money and her father is well, a multimillionaire.  By the time Lisa is seven, her mother and she have moved thirteen times. Lisa once walks in on her mother squatting on top of the toilet seat.  “I learned that in India,” she said. “It’s a better position.  Close the door”.  On the other hand, her father lives in a sprawling mansion and he has no idea how many rooms there are as he has not set foot in most of them.

Amidst mounting arguments with her mother when she is in middle school, Lisa moves in full time with her father and hopes for her life to turn around, to be accepted into the family.  Instead, she comes face to face with the contrasting qualities in her eccentric father who alternates between being frugal and generous, mean and wonderful.  Lisa feels incredibly lonely and anxious amidst her father and stepmother and ends up breaking a glass every evening at dinner and wonders whether they had made a mistake in allowing her to live with them.

Lisa finally makes her way to Harvard, faking Steve’s signature on the application.  But her freedom is clipped when Steve stops paying for her tuition in her final year.  She is bailed out by her neighbors, who in turn are deeply hurt when Lisa invites Steve to her graduation.  In the near climatic scene in the book, however, Steve profusely apologizes to Lisa for not being there for her and often repeats that he owes her one.  The final moments between Steve and Lisa are tender and touching.

Steve used to call Lisa “Small Fry”: “Hey, Small Fry, let’s blast.  We’re livin’ on borrowed time.”  Fry is the term used for young fishes who are thrown back into the sea to give them more time to grow. The key takeaways from the book are that a) you can’t change your parents and b) you can’t buy your way into relationships.

But this book nearly didn’t happen. When Lisa is a senior in high school, she feels bereft of a story to tell as her aunt Mona has published a fictional book with a character named Jane, who is based on Lisa.  “Reading her book, I felt there would be nothing left for me to write about.” Further when Steve is sick with cancer, he once asks Lisa, “Are you going to write about me?” “No”. “Good”, he replies. But in putting out her version of events, Lisa has pulled off a literary feat and produced a compelling read, one that is bound to make the reader look at Steve Jobs in a different light.