Southampton - Author Kaylie Jones was raised a child of privilege. The daughter of National Book Award winning author James Jones and actress Gloria Jones [nee Mosolino], she spent most of her childhood in the expatriate, upscale bohemian existence of Paris and moved to the Hamptons with her parents' return to America when she was a teenager. Surrounded by artists and writers on both sides of the pond, she was indeed raised as a child of artistic privilege and she admits it is a privilege that exacts a cost. A cost she has documented in her new book, "Lies My Mother Never Told Me."

"Lies My Mother Never Told Me" is Kaylie Jones' fourth book.

Prior to her scheduled reading at BookHampton on Saturday, Aug. 29, Hamptons.com sat down with Jones at the Southampton bookstore to gain some insight into the new title and her motivation for writing what was clearly a difficult memoir to bring to page, as her parents and her own alcoholism is a central theme of the book.

Whereas most writers' first novels prove to be the most autobiographical, Jones really didn't fully incorporate in her writing the extraordinary experience of her Parisian literary heritage until her third, highly popular novel, "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries." According to Jones, "It was really a process. My first published novel, "As Soon As It Rains," was my theses from Columbia and it was about my father dying and the process of getting over that, it was a small portion of things. It was autobiographical in that sense, but I changed a lot of the external details so it wouldn't feel too close for me."

Explaining her third breakout book, which was made into a film starring Kris Kristofferson and Leelee Sobieski, Jones said, "'A Soldier's Daughter' was a return to my original college theses which was a series of connected stories. I went back and completely revamped and re-wrote that whole book with the idea that they would be connected stories, standing alone but with an over-arching theme. I focused on each person individually in each chapter of that book. It came out in 1989, but I got to go back in 2001 and rework it and insert a piece that I felt was missing." That particular piece was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was the cover story of an issue of Confrontation Magazine.

"It is completely a memoir," was the way Jones described her latest book, which describes her life growing up in Paris and Sagaponak with parents whose alcoholism permeated every aspect of their lifestyle. Albeit a celebrated artistic lifestyle, it was one that was volatile and sometimes self-destructive. Much of the book deals with Jones' often confrontational relationship with her actress mother who earlier in her life was a stand-in for Marilyn Monroe and later became an editor for Doubleday with her friend Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Jones describes her book as "completely a memoir."

I commented that Jones' relationship with her father seemed to be better than the one with her mother, "He died when I was 16, so we never had the chance to have a fight. I suppose most kids get into fights at that age with their parents and break away and become individualized. I never did that with him, so in my mind he is still my Daddy and I am 16 and he is 55. That is the way it will always be and I know that and that is okay. Yes, he was the favored parent for me; we were more alike and got along better."

The alcoholism that was a centerpiece of her parents' life carried into her own, "I am sure there was a genetic component there. From knowing other people with a similar story, I find that there is always a genetic component. You either can't handle it or you handle it too well. For me, I handled it way too well. You can drink and drink and drink and you are fine. I was the kid they always gave the car keys to."

The subject of drinking in her third book was more glamorous in its portrayal than what Jones has penned in her memoir, "Yes, because when I wrote that book I was still drinking. All the quirkiness and weirdness and my dad's temper and my mother's inability to mother is in there, but it is perceived through that lens. It was just the way it was and I still really like that book a great deal. It is all true, but it is true through that lens."

Jones admits to the self-destructive nature of her own drinking problem, "It became debilitating for me. I suffered severe memory loss. People would say to me, 'Don't you remember we did this or that" and I couldn't. The eighties are gone! I had to rely on journals, notes and letters to get my chronology clear on what happened."

Jones has been sober for 17 years and seven months, quitting drinking when she was 31. This followed a "terrible six-month marriage" and her mother's own deterioration. "I went to Al-Anon, not for myself but because of my mother, because of her deterioration. Eventually, I was able to find my way to stop drinking."

Unfortunately Jones' sobriety only flamed the fans of resentment in her mother, "Once I stopped drinking my mother became enraged with me. She thought that it was a judgment on her. It wasn't, it was just that I couldn't drink and I told her I couldn't drink. The worse she got, the more narcissistic she got, the more she couldn't separate reality and her perception of reality. I think it got worse and worse."

Authors Kaylie Jones and Michael Tonello during the audience Q&A at BookHampton.

I asked Jones if her sobriety changed her stylistically, the way she actually wrote, "That is an interesting question that few people ever ask. When I first stopped drinking I really thought I couldn't write anymore. At first you really lose your bearings. I never drank when I wrote, but I would always drink after I wrote. Or I wrote hung-over, which is approximately the same thing."

After taking six months off from writing she slowly found her way back to the words. She credits becoming a gym rat as helpful in making the transition from drinking writer to sober writer. "It would transition me from the madness of writing back into the ability to function. Then I found Tae Kwon Do later when I took my child to classes. I started at the same time as my daughter." Jones says her writing is better and clearer than it has ever been.

I commented that one would wonder if F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernst Hemingway would have been able to write about the subject matter in their books had they not actually experienced the lifestyle they wrote about, "Looking back I think there is a parallel between being children of alcoholics and this feeling of alienation and loneliness. There is a correlation between watching the world from the outside and writing. Were they drawn to the writing first or the impressions of life that they grew up with? William Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, all those writers that my father was drawn to came from complicated families, all with some aspect of alcoholism." Jones explained that her dad's father was an alcoholic, a dentist who actually lost his practice and became the town drunk that would pass out in doorways. He eventually committed suicide.

Jones further elaborated, "What is the nature of the writer? I think the nature of the writer is to tear down the myths of the family that lies. Wolfe tore down his whole town ["Look Homeward, Angel"]. He didn't recognize his own drinking problem, but he recognized the hypocrisy and the lies. They practically ran him out of town for it."

I asked Jones if she feared the reaction to her memoir from her mother's friends and family, "The reaction has been so much better than I thought it would be. Most of my mother's friends are gone; they too are dead from this disease. I tried really hard to create a fair portrait of her and that is the reaction I have gotten from people. Her humor, her quirkiness and her glamour is all there. It's very harrowing at the end, but most people have not been offended."

During her post interview reading and Q&A Jones was joined by Michael Tonello, author of "Bringing Home The Birkin." Jones read from a particularly poignant chapter that dealt with a brief period of her mother's sobriety, a sobriety that Gloria Jones unfortunately did not make last. Gratefully, Jones herself has overcome her own alcoholism and brought to page a brilliant book that is always honest and illuminating, often humorous and sometimes painful. "Lies My Mother Never Told Me" is a revealing look at an iconic American artistic family, their friends, their world and the cost associated with living in that world. Bravo!