Comedian and writer Lily Bragge knows what it is to be a user and a taker, a liar, cheat and thief. It wasn't until she had lost everything - custody of her son, her friends, her career, her possessions and, almost, her sanity - that she was able to gain some kind of understanding of herself and rebuild her life from a blank, empty slate. In My Dirty Shiny Life, she traces with verve and humour her experience growing up with the chaos, fear and violence of a career-criminal father, and her survival of sexual abuse, heroin addiction, clinical depression and incarceration - and her ultimate redemption. Both harrowing and hilarious, My Dirty Shiny Life is a story of blood ties that bind and inordinate familial love.