Summary: Small Fry: A captivating memoir by the daughter of Apple founder Steve Jobs by Lisa Brennan-Jobs

Daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs pens an affecting memoir of longing and rejection by her iconic yet emotionally unavailable father – Apple founder Steve Jobs. Pick up Small Fry for an astonishingly personal view of the alternate side of an innovator who changed the world yet devastated those closest in doing so.

In Small Fry (2018), author Lisa Brennan-Jobs provides readers with an intimate and candid reflection on her life from birth to the passing of her father, Steve Jobs. Along with offering an insider’s look into the life of the founder of Apple, the work is a highly detailed account of a Californian upbringing.

Lisa Brennan-Jobs was born in 1978, the daughter of a free-spirited artist named Chrisann and the man who would later become the co-founder of Apple. For years, Steve Jobs denied any relation to his eldest daughter. Lisa’s heartbreaking account of her childhood as the unwanted daughter of an eccentric and brilliant tech mogul is a story of longing, resentment, and desperation.

Growing up in the shadow of Steve Jobs.

READ THIS BOOK SUMMARY IF YOU:

• Want to learn more about the life of Apple’s co-founder
• Are interested in person accounts of family struggles
• Enjoy stories of resilience and overcoming childhood trauma

Steve Jobs has long seemed larger than life. He’s the visionary who brought us the iPhone and the Macbook, the genius behind Pixar’s industry-changing films, the CEO with impeccable aesthetics – in short, a man who wielded an almost godlike influence over society.

But in addition to his invaluable contributions to our modern landscape, he was also a human being with fears and flaws just like the rest of us.

This book summary include an unvarnished glimpse of Jobs, provided by his firstborn child, Lisa Brennan-Jobs. But they also offer more than that. Starting with how her parents met and ending with her father’s death, this book summary are also a chronicle of what it was like to live life torn between two families in 1980s and 1990s California.

In this summary of Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs, you’ll also discover

• how Steve Jobs wooed the author’s mother;
• how little Steve Jobs paid in child support; and
• why the author is grateful for Bono.

Introduction

Lisa Brennan-Jobs spent the year leading up to her father’s death visiting him every other month. Even though the visits felt burdensome and she often felt like an outsider, she kept going back.

When Lisa was home in New York City, she still saw her father all the time. She saw him on the subway, sitting in the park, or walking along the street. It gave her a jolt, and she always wondered if it were actually him, even though she knew her dad was all the way across the country.

Lisa saw him even in the years before his illness, but those times it was in the form of magazine covers and television screens.

He was her dad, even if no one else realized it.

The on-and-off relationship of Lisa’s parents ended in an unintentional pregnancy.

It was the spring of 1972. Steve Jobs was in his senior year at Homestead High School, in Cupertino, California, and he’d just met Chrisann Brennan, a junior. On Wednesday evenings, in the high school quad, Chrisann would assist a group of friends who were making a claymation film. On one of these evenings, seventeen-year-old Steve approached her with a sheet of paper in his hands.

He’d typed out the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” He handed Chrisann the paper and, strangely enough, told her to return it to him when she was done. He returned on subsequent Wednesdays, holding candles between takes for Chrisann so that she could add to drawings for the film.

Thus began Chrisann and Steve’s on-again, off-again relationship. It would last nearly six years.

In that first year, they fell in love. One of Steve’s biggest gestures was to stand up to Virginia, Chrisann’s mother, who was affected by paranoid schizophrenia and was becoming increasingly unhinged and harsh. She’d started telling the neighbors that Chrisann had intercourse with dogs and had accused her daughter of playing the recorder because it resembled a penis.

In the summer, Chrisann and Steve moved into a cabin together, paying the rent with the money Steve and his friend Steve Wozniak earned from making and selling “blue boxes” – illegal devices that, when held up to a phone’s receiver, emitted a series of tones that fooled phone companies into putting calls through for free.

In the fall, Steve left for Reed College in Oregon. But he was directionless, and he dropped out after about half a year. Chrisann, meanwhile, had begun dating someone else, and the relationship fell apart without much conversation.

When Steve realized that Chrisann had essentially dumped him, he was deeply upset.

About two years later, they got back together, and Chrisann started working in the packing department of the nascent company that Steve had started with Wozniak – a company they’d named Apple.

But Chrisann was unhappy. Indeed, she’d been planning to leave Steve, who was temperamental, but an unintentional pregnancy put a kink in her plans. Unbeknownst to her, her body had rejected the contraceptive she was using, an intrauterine device.

When Steve found out, he was furious and ran from the room.

Steve Jobs was neither present at Lisa’s birth nor willing to admit paternity.

“It’s not my kid,” Steve repeated. It was 1978, and Steve had just arrived on the farm in Oregon where, a few days earlier, Chrisann had given birth to a baby girl. Steve was there to meet the child he insisted wasn’t his, even voicing this to the people gathered at the farm.

Nonetheless, before he left, Steve helped Chrisann choose a name. They agreed on Lisa.

In the following years, Steve continued to deny paternity, and Chrisann was forced to raise Lisa alone. She went on welfare, making a bit of extra money on the side with housecleaning and waitressing jobs. Steve rarely visited and provided no substantial financial support.

In 1980, the district attorney of San Mateo County, California, sued Steve. The lawsuit, initiated by the state on Chrisann’s behalf, required he pay child support. The state also sought reimbursement of Chrisann’s welfare payments.

Again, Steve claimed he wasn’t the father. But after a DNA test, there was little doubt. The chance that Steve was Lisa’s father came to 94.4 percent, the highest result possible for the instruments of the time.

For months, the case dragged on. But then, suddenly, Steve’s lawyers began hastening it to a close. Instead of $385, Steve agreed to pay $500 per month in child support, as well as health insurance until Lisa’s eighteenth birthday. He also reimbursed the state for all Chrisann’s welfare payments.

It soon became clear why he’d been so eager to tie up these financial loose ends: Apple went public four days after the case’s finalization, and Steve Jobs was suddenly worth two hundred million dollars.

Legally speaking, Steve Jobs was Lisa’s father – but that didn’t stop him from denying it. When Lisa was an adult, she learned that, when she was young, Steve had carried a picture of her in his wallet. At parties, he would take it out and say, “It’s not my kid. But she doesn’t have a father, so I’m trying to be there for her.”

Lisa revered her father and moved in with him after life with her mother became untenable.

“I have a secret,” Lisa whispered. “My father is Steve Jobs.”

Lisa was eight years old and she’d recently transferred from a private school to a public school in Palo Alto, California. She wasn’t supposed to divulge her father’s identity due to fears that she might be kidnapped. But the temptation to tell the truth almost always proved too great.

Her new school friends looked at her, puzzled. One of them asked who that was.

Though his name wasn’t familiar on the playground, Steve was a profound presence in Lisa’s consciousness. He was a multimillionaire, a pioneering, semi-mystical individual – a distant point of light in her otherwise difficult life with her mother.

Chrisann clearly loved her daughter. They regularly went skating together, and while on one of these outings, Lisa remembers Chrisann spontaneously declaring that she was exactly the daughter she wanted. And on many occasions, she would announce that she didn’t only love Lisa; she also liked her.

But Chrisann also felt thwarted, as though parenthood had cut her life short. Money was tight. She had no close friends. Relationships with boyfriends never worked out. Meanwhile, the father of her child was being featured in Time magazine, where he hinted that Lisa could be the child of any number of men. These cumulative frustrations overflowed in frightening outbreaks.

Once, while driving in the rain, Chrisann started screaming obscenities at the windshield and speeding, though visibility was low. Lisa, who was four at the time, sat silently beside her, petrified. When upset, Chrisann would blame Lisa for her horrible life, flinging insulting epithets at her daughter and ruing the day of her birth. She would yell that having a child had been a mistake.

By the time Lisa turned thirteen, the situation had become dire, and officials from her school called Steve, informing him that if he didn’t take her in they would be forced to call social services.

When Lisa learned that she’d be living with Steve and his new family, it felt like a fantasy come true. The secret she’d cherished as a child would finally be out in the open, and her life, hitherto so unglamorous, would be transformed as by the tap of a magic wand. Or so she believed.

Lisa tried, with little success, to become part of Steve’s new family.

“Do you want to change your name?” Steve Jobs asked.

Lisa had recently moved in with her father and his wife, Laurene. Steve’s question came out of the blue, as they were passing in the hallway.

“Change it to what?” she asked. “My name,” he replied. At first, she thought he meant “Steve.” But then she figured out he meant “Jobs.” The question gave her pause – for multiple reasons.

One of Steve’s prerequisites for Lisa’s living with him was that she not see her mother for six months. To a certain degree, Lisa felt that she’d abandoned Chrisann. A change of name would add betrayal to abandonment. In the end, she kept her mother’s name and took Steve’s, too, connecting them with a hyphen – Brennan-Jobs.

Her decision pleased Steve, but it by no means entitled her to special treatment. Indeed, she hardly dared set a foot wrong in her new home. While she’d often commit covert acts of rebellion against her mother – doing a shoddy job with the dishes, say, or lethargically taking out the trash – she diligently did everything her father asked of her. She cleaned the dishes almost every night and would look after Steve and Laurene’s newborn son, Reed, whenever asked.

Lisa tried to endear herself in other ways, too. In an attempt to impress her father and beef up her college applications, she dedicated herself to her schoolwork and extracurricular activities. She organized an Opera Club and got herself elected as freshman class president.

Steve, if anything, seemed displeased by these efforts. Her school was over an hour away, in San Francisco, and he refused to organize after-school transportation around her schedule. Yet when she stayed overnight with friends in the city, he rebuked her for her lack of commitment to her new family.

Meanwhile, he deprived her of basic conveniences, refusing to fix the heating in her room or replace her bicycle when it was stolen, though it was her only means of transport. When Lisa was growing up, Steve had been an intermittent presence, sometimes showing up to watch a movie or take her skating, sometimes remaining away for months. She’d hoped that living with him would bring them closer together. Now, in an odd turn of events, he often accused her of being the one who didn’t want to be part of his family.

Lisa hoped being admitted to Harvard would raise her in her father’s esteem and provide an escape from his criticism.

One morning, Steve and Laurene awoke to find sheets of paper taped across the inside of their home’s hallway windows. The same excited words were written across each sheet, in all caps: “I GOT IN. I GOT IN. I GOT IN.”

Steve didn’t know what the papers meant, so Laurene explained, “She’s into Harvard.”

Lisa had found out earlier that morning, after calling the Harvard admissions hotline at 4:30 a.m., which was 7:30 a.m. EST.

Neither he nor Laurene had helped Lisa prepare her Harvard application.

Not that Steve had other plans for Lisa. If anything, he seemed certain she wouldn’t amount to much. “The thing is,” he said once while he and Lisa were standing in the kitchen, “you have no marketable skills.” And one of his running jokes was to point to a particular bar, Ruby’s, which the family regularly drove past, and say, “That’s where Lisa is going to work.” At some point, Lisa figured out it was a strip club.

To Lisa, admittance to Harvard seemed like a sort of panacea. It proved she was intelligent, worthy of regard and respect. Furthermore, it would give her a new East Coast life, far from her taunting, temperamental father. Having foregone college, Steve didn’t think much of higher education. In his opinion, college was a place for people without creative vision.

The four years preceding her acceptance to Harvard hadn’t been easy for Lisa. Steve’s jibes rankled, but more painful was the persistent feeling of loneliness. When Lisa was seventeen, Steve and Laurene joined her during one of her therapy sessions. “I’m feeling terribly alone,” Lisa said, and, after an interminable silence, broke into tears. “We’re just cold people,” Laurene said.

Steve did make attempts at kindness. He once gave Lisa one of his company’s computers (a NeXT desktop), but when it wouldn’t turn on, he took it away and didn’t replace it. He did agree to pay her Harvard tuition, though grudgingly – and before she left, he bought her a new Armani coat.

Later, he told Lisa something she would never have guessed on her own – that her high school years, when she’d lived with him and his family, had been his happiest ones.

Steve and Lisa stopped talking after she refused to attend the circus with him and Laurene.

The summer before Lisa’s senior year at Harvard, Steve asked her to go to the circus. Lisa was back in California, staying at Steve’s house, but on the day he called her, she was with her mom, Chrisann, who was preparing dinner. Lisa’s relationship with Chrisann was improving. At the time, Lisa was unhealthily thin and depressed and the time with her mother felt healing, cozy and calm.

She said she couldn’t go to Cirque du Soleil with Steve, Laurene and their son Reed because she wanted to spend time with her mother. Steve repeated what had become a sort of catchphrase for him: “You’re not being part of this family.” Then he told her that if she didn’t go to the circus, she would need to move out.

Lisa was surprised and hurt. Her mother, who’d been forced by financial difficulties to move into her boyfriend’s cramped house, couldn’t offer her a place to stay. Nonetheless, instead of capitulating, Lisa contacted Steve’s neighbors, a couple named Kevin and Dorothy who’d offered Lisa kindness and support over the years.

Kevin was an upright, stalwart guy. Indeed, he’d saved Dorothy from an abusive household and married her. He told Lisa that she could live with them. While Steve and Laurene were at the circus, Lisa and Kevin packed up her things. She left a note for Steve, asking him to call her and saying she loved him, but she didn’t hear from him for the rest of the summer.

When the summer ended and she returned to Harvard, she discovered that her tuition fees hadn’t been paid. Kevin came to the rescue and, in another incredibly grand gesture, insisted that he pay for her final year.

Lisa was extremely grateful – and yet, the reality of Harvard and academic life continued to fall short of her fantasies. Despite her good grades and her involvement with the college newspaper and literary review, she was lonely, as she had been every semester.

After Lisa’s refusal to go to the circus, Steve stopped responding to her emails and phone calls. He and Lisa drifted apart.

Lisa was never sure whether Steve really cared for her – but she finally learned his true feelings.

Back in 1977 and 1978, prior to Lisa’s birth, Steve had begun developing a new computer, a sort of grandfather to the Macintosh. It hit the market after she was born, and he named it the Lisa. The computer wasn’t a success. It was too expensive for the time, and it was soon discontinued. As a child, when she’d felt the need to tell her school friends the secret of her father’s identity, Lisa would sometimes mention that Steve had named a computer after her.

When she moved in with her father, she’d asked him point blank if it was named after her. His response was curt and decisive: “Nope.” Later, with Lisa present, Laurene had asked Steve on her behalf. But Steve had denied it again, saying it was named after “an old girlfriend.”

When Lisa told her mother about Steve’s denials, she said, “Hogwash.” But, then again, Chrisann also repeatedly said that Steve loved Lisa more than anything – he just didn’t know it. By the time Lisa graduated from Harvard, she didn’t know what to think. Was the Lisa named after her or not? Did her father love her or not? Did she occupy a special place in his heart and life, or was she – as Steve and Laurene’s daughter Eve said years later, “Daddy’s mistake”?

The answers to these questions became clear in the years leading up to Steve’s death. When Lisa was twenty-seven, her father invited her to join him and his family on a yachting trip in the South of France. At one point, he announced they’d be stopping to visit a friend.

The friend turned out to be Bono, of the band U2. In the evening, after showing them around his place, Bono started asking Steve about the early days of Apple, and, looking at Lisa, he asked the question she’d often asked herself: “So was the Lisa computer named after her?”

Lisa braced herself for Steve’s denial – but it didn’t come. “Yeah,” he said. “It was.” Lisa thanked Bono. It was the first time Steve had said yes.

Steve would be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer less than three years later, and he became increasingly emotionally open as his sickness worsened. In bed, in the hospital, he once said to Lisa, “I didn’t spend enough time with you when you were little… Now it’s too late.” Crying, he said, “I owe you one.”

Steve died soon thereafter. After his death, Lisa’s mother came to visit. Though they still fought, she and Lisa would become much closer from this point on. “I can feel him here,” Chrisann said, “And you know what? He’s overjoyed to be with you.”

Hippies

Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs met at the end of high school. Several years later, he was just starting Apple when she discovered she was pregnant. Steve was furious and left, refusing to discuss the pregnancy.

Lisa was born in 1978. Steve denied paternity.

Over the next several years, Chrisann moved around and survived on welfare and waitressing. When Lisa was 2, Steve was ordered to take a paternity test, which proved their relationship. He agreed to pay $500 per month in child support. Four days later, Apple went public.

Steve was worth over $200 million.

Chrisann was free spirited and artistic but immature and terrible with money. She often called Steve and asked for help. He helped financially but didn’t have a relationship with Lisa. She barely saw him.

Although she was just a child, Lisa felt responsible for Chrisann, who often struggled with being a single mother. By the time Lisa was 7 years old, she and Chrisann had moved over a dozen times.

Lisa felt different from other kids her age, believing that there was something shameful about her. She wondered if other people noticed it, too.

Lifelines

When Lisa was 7, Chrisann moved them to an apartment in Palo Alto, California — the first place she was able to rent in her own name.

Lisa didn’t have a bedroom, so she usually slept on a futon or in her mother’s bed. But Steve had promised to bring her a bed. She was excited to see him, wearing her nicest outfit. Chrisann and Lisa waited in the front yard for a long time. Finally, Chrisann suggested they go skating instead. Steve never arrived.

Chrisann told Lisa that Steve loved her, deep down. He just didn’t know it yet, but one day he would realize and wish he hadn’t missed so much of her life.

She later learned that throughout her childhood, Steve carried a photo of her around. He’d show it to people at parties, saying that Lisa wasn’t his daughter but he was trying to be there for her anyway.

Later, Lisa’s new bed was delivered — without Steve. It was the first gift he’d ever given her.

One of Chrisann’s old boyfriends had a sister named Debbie. She didn’t have children, so she took Lisa under her wing. They began going on outings every week, and Lisa always looked forward to their time together.

Chrisann struggled with depression. Although Lisa preferred the times when her mother didn’t have a boyfriend, Chrisann only seemed to thrive when she was dating someone. Between boyfriends, she’d retreat to her room and sit in the darkness. Their ongoing money struggles didn’t help.

Lisa often heard her mother talk about how she had missed out on her 20s, implying that motherhood was a burden. When Chrisann grew particularly down, she’d pull clothes out of her closet and rip them apart. At one point, Steve invited her to his birthday party. It was going to be fancy, so Chrisann didn’t go. She didn’t have many clothes left.

Eventually, Chrisann grew to resent Debbie, feeling like the other woman was judging her and turning Lisa against her. After one of their outings, Lisa and Debbie returned home to find Chrisann waiting, enraged. She screamed at Debbie until the woman drove away. Lisa never saw her friend again.

Let’s Blast

When Lisa was 8 Steve began visiting her and Chrisann every month.

On one of his visits, Steve brought his younger sister, Mona. They had only recently met, because Steve was adopted and didn’t meet his birth mother until he was an adult. Mona was an author, and her mother hadn’t been kind to her. She took an interest in her niece, perhaps seeing herself in the girl with an unstable home life.

Mona encouraged Lisa, making a fuss over things she did well. She wrote her letters and sent her gifts. Later, it would be Mona that encouraged Steve to take care of Chrisann and Lisa.

Chrisann enrolled in art school, and Steve offered to keep Lisa on Wednesday nights when her mother had classes. His house was big but cavernous: He never bothered to furnish the mansion besides a few of the rooms.

Lisa was excited to spend time with her father, but their visits were awkward. They didn’t know what to talk about. Lisa tried to play the role of a normal daughter, hoping he would reciprocate. It never felt natural.

Eventually, Chrisann realized how uncomfortable Lisa felt and decided she would spend Wednesday night with friends. Lisa was glad for the new arrangement.

Small Fry

Chrisann and Lisa moved yet again, but this house would be the most permanent of her childhood. They stayed for seven years. It was in Palo Alto, and Steve paid to have it renovated before they moved in. Lisa noticed they had new luxuries around this time — a cordless phone, a microwave, a walk-in closet — and she later learned that Steve had increased his payments to Chrisann.

Steve visited on weekends, taking Lisa skating and calling her “small fry.” Later, Chrisann would say this was when Steve finally loved his daughter. Lisa just knew that he was around a lot more than he used to be, but things were still awkward sometimes.

Later, Lisa was upset to learn that she would be changing schools again. Steve didn’t think her public school was good enough, so he paid the tuition for her to attend a private school.

At the start of fifth grade, Lisa was determined to be popular at her new school. She began dressing differently, wearing short skirts and heavy makeup. She bought big hoop earrings and put them on after her mother had dropped her off at school. Lisa still felt there was something wrong with her deep inside — some flaw that other girls didn’t have.

When Chrisann finally found out about Lisa’s clothes, she was furious.

Lisa wasn’t doing well in school. She cared more about socializing than studying. Chrisann wanted her to apply herself and work hard for a good future. Lisa rebelled, thinking that her mother wanted to change her into herself, only later realizing that Chrisann actually wanted something much better for her daughter.

Runaway

After Lisa’s teacher complimented one of her writing assignments, it changed her entire outlook on school. The praise motivated her to work harder than she ever had. When seventh grade rolled around, Lisa was determined to focus on school instead of popularity. She threw herself into every assignment, always seeking approval and praise.

But things weren’t going well at home. Lisa and Chrisann were fighting nearly every night. They were loud, intense fights that the neighbors could hear. Lisa tried to reason with her mother, but it did no good. She would end up frozen, wishing to be invisible while her mother raged.

During one fight, Chrisann said that she wished she had never had Lisa. It was all too much: Lisa left the house and walked around Palo Alto until morning. When she came home, her mother had called the police. They reconciled, but the fighting continued.

Steve had gotten married to a woman named Laurene. The relationship between he and Chrisann had cooled significantly, and the tension finally culminated into a huge fight. After that, they didn’t speak anymore.

Laurene became pregnant soon after the wedding and had a baby boy. Lisa was devastated at first: She couldn’t admit it out loud, but she had dreamed of belonging with their family after the wedding. The baby would replace her. Still, when Reed was born she loved her baby brother.

Lisa confided in her teachers, telling them about the fights with her mother. Eventually, the school reached out to Steve and said if he didn’t take Lisa in, they would call social services.

Steve would only allow Lisa to move in if she cut contact with Chrisann for six months. Lisa felt guilty, but the opportunity to move in with Steve, Laurene, and Reed — to be a part of a real family — was what she had been dreaming of. She couldn’t say no.

Years later, she would feel suffocating guilt about choosing the parent who had abandoned her as an infant.

Small Nation

Lisa moved in with Steve and Laurene. Her mother had agreed that time apart would be for the best, although they were both sad to say goodbye. Lisa felt both relief and guilt.

She wanted so much to be a part of the family, but it just didn’t feel right. Lisa was an outsider, her role unclear. She existed in simultaneous states of anxiety and gratitude, going overboard to please them so they would love her.

By then, Lisa was attending a private high school an hour away from Palo Alto. Unlike Chrisann, who had freely driven Lisa around whenever she needed it, Steve wasn’t helpful.

When her extracurricular activities kept her late, Steve left her to figure out her own rides home. Lisa often stayed overnight with friends, and her father began saying that she wasn’t trying hard enough. She realized how ironic it was that the parent who had largely left her alone as a child was now accusing her of being aloof.

Eventually, Steve convinced Lisa to transfer to a public school in Palo Alto. She didn’t have friends and felt very lonely there, but was willing to make the change so she could be home more often. She wanted to please him.

To her, it seemed that Steve wanted Lisa around but not as a complete member of the family. He shooed her out of family photographs and invited her to events only to babysit Reed. Often, it was Laurene who was conscientious enough to include Lisa.

After the initial six months, Lisa began seeing her mother again. They still fought, but there was a comfort and familiarity with Chrisann. Before long, Lisa began splitting time between her two parents. Steve was cold to her because of it, but she missed her mother and felt too lonely to stay with Steve permanently.

Marketable Skills

Lisa was determined to go to college. Neither Steve nor Chrisann had gone, but she had her heart set on Harvard.

To improve her chances, Lisa began adding a lot of extra activities to her schedule. She was already making good grades, but she thought student government and the debate team would help. She won first place at her very first debate tournament and hoped that Steve would be proud. Instead, he told her she should quit. He didn’t believe the debate team was useful in the real world.

Although Lisa never outwardly said she wanted to go to Harvard, it was like Steve already knew. He made disparaging comments about the East Coast and planned activities that Lisa felt were purposefully pulling her away from school. Once, he invited her on a trip to Hawaii. When she became worried about missing class, Steve said she wouldn’t be a part of the family if she missed the trip.

On the trip, Steve was horrible to the hotel staff and his family. He made comments about how sending his kids to Hawaii was a better use of money than sending them to college.

Steve also talked about his wife’s lack of taste and skills. Every time he was cruel to Laurene, Lisa felt a special kinship with her stepmother. Secretly, she believed that Laurene could do better. She was always disappointed that their closeness would vanish the moment Laurene and Steve reconciled.

Later, after they had returned to California, Steve told Lisa that she had no marketable skills. He downplayed all of her activities, saying that they were useless in the real world. Lisa was tired of his cruelty and cold behavior. She was tired of everyone making excuses for him because he was eccentric and brilliant.

She decided that she wanted to spend more time with her mother before going to college. Truthfully, she would have preferred just to leave Steve’s house altogether, but she didn’t want to abandon her little brother.

Steve’s comment about her lack of skills broke something in her, making her care less about his approval. Lisa realized their relationship would never be what she had always wanted.

Flight

Lisa was elected as the editor in chief of the school paper during her senior year. Of all her extracurricular activities, this was the only one that she enjoyed purely for the work itself. The rest was all to look good on her college applications.

She began dating a boy named Josh who worked at the paper. He was kind and sensitive, and for the first time in a long time she felt free from her parents. When Lisa was with Josh, she didn’t worry about her mom’s money troubles or her dad’s cruel remarks. It was refreshing and safe all at the same time.

Lisa visited her aunt Mona in New York City to look at colleges. She toured Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard. She was set on Harvard, even though she didn’t know very much about the school. Deep down, Lisa felt that getting into the best school represented worthiness. It would act as a seal of approval. From whom, she didn’t know.

Weeks later, she received word that she was accepted into Harvard University.

Summary

The key message in this book summary:

Lisa Brennan-Jobs wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Her childhood and teenage years weren’t easy, even though her father was a famous multimillionaire. After fights with her mother, Chrisann, attracted the attention of school officials, Lisa moved in with her father, Steve Jobs. But life there wasn’t much easier, and she felt a loneliness that persisted throughout her college years. Before his death, Steve Jobs voiced his regrets that he hadn’t been more present when Lisa was a child. During those years, however, his wish for closeness was far from apparent.

Conclusion

Lisa moved across the country to attend Harvard. She and Steve talked occasionally, but things became icy between them. When she visited California, he refused to talk with her but wanted her to babysit Reed. Lisa said she wouldn’t babysit if her father continued to ignore her. He stopped responding to her emails and calls.

During breaks from school, Lisa lived with her father’s neighbors. She had met them as a girl and they had always resented the way Steve treated her. When he refused to pay the tuition for her final year at Harvard, they covered the bill.

In the years after college, Lisa rarely saw Steve. His behavior was volatile, sometimes warm and sometimes cold. He and Laurene had two daughters after Reed, and in an online biography he told the world he had three children instead of four.

Years later, Lisa was an adult living in New York City. She’d gotten her MFA and worked as a consultant for a graphic design firm. Steve had cancer, so Lisa visited Palo Alto regularly. Once, he specifically asked her to visit when Laurene and the children would be away.

During other visits, Steve had been aloof. But this visit was different. Steve sobbed to Lisa, apologizing for treating her poorly and not spending more time with her. He mourned the fact that it was now too late. He was very ill at this point.

At the end of their visit, Steve told Lisa she wasn’t to blame for any of their problems. Now that he was too ill to walk or eat, he was finally apologizing. It was what she had always wanted, but even now she was afraid to trust it. Deep down, she believed that had he miraculously recovered, he’d take it all back and return to his old ways.

Still, she was glad to hear it. During her last visit to see her father, Lisa made peace with her life. She recognized that she wasn’t a mistake, and that every difficult aspect of her childhood had helped form her into who she was.

After Steve’s death, Lisa remained close with her mother. They still fought, but their attachment was stronger than any disagreement. When Chrisann visited her daughter in New York, she said she felt Steve’s presence. It was like he was following his daughter around, delighted to be in her presence.

Lisa didn’t know if this was true, but she enjoyed the thought anyway.

About the author

Lisa Brennan-Jobs is an author and journalist. Her writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Vogue, The Harvard Advocate, and The Massachusetts Review. Brennan-Jobs holds degrees from both Harvard University and Bennington College.

Lisa Brennan-Jobs lives in Brooklyn and Small Fry is her first book.

Genres

Personal Memoirs, Parenting, Computer, Business, Biography, Memoir, Autobiography, Adult, Family, Contemporary, Unfinished, Leaders and Notable People

Table of Contents

Hippies
Lifelines
Let’s Blast
Small Fry
Runaway
Small Nation
Marketable Skills
Flight
Coda

Review

In her poignant memoir Small Fry, Lisa Brennan-Jobs unpacks her complicated childhood as the eldest yet unacknowledged daughter of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Born from an early relationship Jobs refused to accept, Brennan-Jobs intricately details feeling unwanted and inconvenient as Jobs repeatedly denies paternity and financial support while building the Apple empire. She paints an intimate yet painful portrait of her father as a brilliant, charismatic yet emotionally volatile figure struggling with the responsibilities of newfound wealth and fame.

Much of the memoir centers on Brennan-Jobs’ quest for her father’s inconsistent love and validation as she secretly visits his wealthy new family, even living with them for a painful period before being forced to recognize her permanent outsider status. There are scenes of Steve Jobs verbally diminishing Brennan-Jobs in ways both small and excruciatingly sharp. Yet over the years glimmers of tenderness emerge – a quick swim together, a package stuffed with money before college – though the rejection always returns. Eventually Brennan-Jobs realizes she cannot contort herself to fit Jobs’ elusive approval, and simply claims herself as his daughter whether he admits their bond or not. She aims not to vilify but to forgive.