Steve Jobs’ daughter tells of sad, lonely life

Their daughter’s memoir, “Small Fry,” is not a book you would read unless you were interested in Jobs — the writing is capable but doesn’t sparkle; the anecdotes are depressing and just pile up.

But if you care about Jobs, the book will tell you a lot about his obsessed, selfabsorbed and mercurial character.

Once he finally admitted paternity, he began sending Brennan money for his daughter sporadically, and occasionally he bought her lavish things — a couch, a car and, much later, a house. But just as often, he promised things he never delivered on.

When Brennan first asked him to buy her a house, he toured the house in question and then bought it for himself and his new wife.

Lisa lived with him off and on throughout her adolescence, and he used “Small Fry” (Grove, 400 pages, $26) by Lisa Brennan-Jobs

emotional blackmail to manipulate her. Whenever she exhibited independence, he would accuse her of not wanting to be part of the family, and she would come crawling back.

He told people he had three children, though Lisa made four. He refused to admit that his first computer, the Apple Lisa, was named after her, and for some reason this denial seemed to disturb her more than anything else. (Finally, when Bono asked him, Jobs admitted the truth — another weird detail of Lisa’s weird childhood.)

Throughout the book, Lisa recounts slights, hurts, snubs and rejections as well as more intimate details — such as Jobs’ habit of walking around the house in a black T-shirt and underpants, and his stringent food restrictions. (A dinner might be grated carrots with half a lemon.)

The indignities pile up, right up until Jobs’ death to cancer in 2011. (Among his last words to her were, “Lis? You smell like a toilet.”)

The man was a jerk, but that was clear from Page 1.

“Small Fry” is an excruciatingly sad read, a tell-all memoir from a woman who craved acceptance and love from a man who was incapable of giving it.