Her by Christina Parravani

My latest memoir read and early review installment is the captivating tale of Christa Parravani, one half of a set of identical twins.

Her book tells the narrative of two girls who go through life together and when one of them dies tragically, the other is left to discover what it means to be alone. I have never understood so thoroughly what being a twin must be like, and I found that the parts of the narrative that discuss the power of identity and the ties of love specifically between twins to be the most interesting part of this memoir.  I felt real pain for Christa as she attempted to navigate life without her other half.

Reader's should be warned that there is a horrifying rape scene in the early chapters of the book, that was written by the rape survivor, Cara, the twin who died (by drug overdose).  The author of this memoir included several excerpts from the deceased twin's journals to illustrate many points of their lives together.  Among those excerpts is the description of the rape that led Cara to the circumstances of her eventual death.  I loved the extra point of view of the twin's lives together.  Cara had a captivating voice as well and it is a tragedy that her life ended early.

This book is scheduled to be released in March.  I am thrilled to have an early copy and will certainly be glad to lend it to anyone with interest.  This story is sad, beautiful and worthwhile reading. The message, corny as it sounds, rang clear and true:  Love always wins over death.

100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do by Kim Stafford

A few weeks ago I expressed my love and appreciation for this book on the elegant art of listening.  I was so impressed by the author's love of words and writing that I thought I would check out his new memoir  100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared.  It was not readily available at the bookstore, so I asked my public library if they would order it, and it showed up in about two weeks.  (Love the public library!)

This is such a fine and exceptional book that I can't stop thinking about it.  Stafford makes everything seem effortless yet profound. His writing is smooth and creamy and makes me want to eat it at every meal.  He is writing about his beloved brother who committed suicide 20 years earlier.  Mr Stafford remembers his brother in a series of stories from their youth together, their short adulthood together and the aftermath of living with such a tragic end to someone you loved.

Every week I sit in the company of great writers who pour their hearts out in short poems, and memoirs of their lives.  Word upon word, each writer is building a series of stories and vignettes not unlike these.  I loved this work.  All the stories individually and as a collective quilt of stories, were without question true and beautiful: honesty that cut to the bone of life.  My fellow writers and I can and do easily write this beautifully and could piece our pieces together to form a grand story, but something about the way he did it seemed profound and unreachable.  He has left something tugging at my heart. Writing that is worth emulating in its candor and vulnerability.

God Bless my library for buying this for me, but  I will have to buy my own copy.  There are many writing lessons to be learned here.

For my reader that lives in Portland. This man runs the Northwest Writing Institute.  You should check it out and take a class from him.  Better yet, I'll come visit and we can both take a course from him.

Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman

A fascinating memoir about life in an Hasidic Jewish sect from Brooklyn, New York.  Deborah Feldman is born to an Hasidic couple who for a variety of reasons do not raise their daughter.  Instead, she is raised by her ultra conservative grandparents, and at age 17 is married to a man she has met only briefly.  Deborah tells about the orthodox rituals and rites that she must obey to be a good daughter and wife.  Throughout her life Deborah feels like she does not quite fit in and shortly after the girth of her son manages to start college and eventually gain the skills, means and courage to divorce her husband and leave the sect with her child.

For such a young writer, she astutely wrote and depicted her humiliating oppression as a girl and young woman. I raced to read to find out how she would escape her circumstances.  In the meantime, I noted lots of intriguing details like how she had to sneak books to read because they were forbidden and how sad she was when her husband forced her to throw all her books away, claiming they were the cause of their unconsummated marriage.  I will remember her description of the ritual baths women are supposed to take to purify themselves every month.  Her rendering of events was clear and unsentimental, but vivid.  All she needed to do was describe what was happening-no editorial necessary. 

The drawback to this fine fine piece was that after such a great build up to leaving her home and family, she leaves many many posed and provocative questions unanswered.  She says that she would never be allowed to leave her son, yet she is able to leave with her son.  She writes briefly of a mother that abandons her and in the prologue we know she has re-established contact with her, but we never see how her mother figures into her liberation.  We never know how her husband and family reacts when she leaves.  She escapes to a new apartment--with a bed, but we don't know how she got that.  One assumes that writing of these customs and rituals has left her permanently shunned, yet she does not mention the aftermath at all. (On her blog she writes of death threats from her grandparents.)

At the end she does spend a great deal of time discussing how much she values her freedom and how much she loves making her own decisions.  I assume that the above questions may be answered in her next book, which is due out in 2013.

Still, it is a lovely story, full of surprises and honesty and insight.  I loved it all and await the next chapter. It works well like the Jeannette Walls memoir Glass Castles.  Get it from the library or your local bookstore. There may be a wait at the library.

What books would you buy?

When I was a child my parents would remind us, "Don't forget to talk to strangers." How could we be helped if we got lost, or were hurt? And how else could we be citizens of the world? Our millions of intricate moves may be as direct and simple as making songs and learning from strangers.  ~ Kim Stafford

A good friend tuned me in to a slim book book by poet Kim Stafford.  The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft spoke to me on many levels.  There were a million passages to quote and use and copy in my work with women and storytelling.  It is a useful book that promotes at its core--listening for words and stories and life.  There were many chapters and ideas that took my writer's breath away. I feel certain I will return to it.

The punchline is that it is a library book, and I cannot write in (or for that matter keep) a library book.  Do you? Written in 2003, it is largely unavailable except on Amazon. I am certain to place an order for this book so that I can remind myself how to be a good listener of the muse that brings us story.

The various essays include writing exercises, stories about the writer's life (including a magical moment where Dick Cheney is the poet's muse), advice about how to listen and find story in everything, and a chapter on where to write.  (We devote a lot of conversation about ideal locations and conditions for writing in my writer's group.) He addresses fiction, non fiction and everything in between.  It felt like the most random, yet eloquent and useful how to write book that I have ever come across.

You'll need to order this one on Amazon as well unless you are lucky enough to have it at your local library.

If you want to begin your writing practice in this new year--I recommend starting here.

Holiday Gift Guide-2012

It has been a great year for book buying, book finding, book giving and books in general, but for me it has not been a great year for actually getting down to the business of reading books.  So much to read and so little time to read it.  I still find great comfort in entering bookstores and libraries, honing in immediately to the stacks of books, and piling them next to me to figure out what to read first.  I love getting a note from the library:  your book is ready and there it is waiting patiently on the shelf for me to check out and enjoy.  But during the last half of this year, I started considerably more books then I finished.  My appetite proved to be way larger then my brain could process.

My morning routine consists of packing lunches and which books I might possibly get to read that day. Often, I am realisitic and bring just one, but I can carry as many as five books into work, hoping against all hope that i might get to choose and read from more than one.  It rarely happened.

So for my holiday giving guide--the best of the books that I still hope to finish.  All have been returned to the local public library.

A GREAT GIFT FOR ALL WOMEN

We've always loved and admired Anna Quindlen. She is us.  She  reflects our hopes and dreams and parenting styles.  We love her journalism; we love her fiction.  Her words ring true.  So here is her memoir--words about family, faith, career and love. She is 60 and hitting her stride.  I don't know anyone woman who wouldn't love to read this memoir.  I'm on page 43!

              

ANOTHER GREAT GIFT FOR WOMEN

Susan Gubar is a professor of English and Women's studies here at IU.  She is famous for editing the Norton Anthology of Women's Literature during the time people were figuring out that it might be important to recognize women's literature.  In 2008 she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and sentenced to an early death.  Well she survived and wrote this fabulous, raw and amazing book about her ordeal.  Notably, she held a public reading of this work here in Bloomington and invited her oncologist to read the poems she (the oncologist) had written right beside her.  It was the most talked about literary event of this year.  I returned it to the library at chapter three. Someone has since leant me another copy.  I have hope I will finish it.

A GREAT COFFE TABLE BOOK and GIFT FOR A WOMAN

For Christmas last year my husband gave me this fabulous collection of photographs by Nancy HIller and Kendall Reeves.  The subject is women's homes, beautifully imagined and decorated and lived in.  They are small, big, victorian, town homes, city homes, barns. They are lavishly decorated with heirlooms and found items and art and personality. Each home is written about with love and intrigue.  When the book was launched the authors had a great exhibition at a local gallery that we attended.  Thanks to my husband who gave me a beautiful book I can feel free to leaf through all year and not be obliged to finish. This is the wonder of the coffee table book.  

GREAT GIFT FOR A CHILD OR A PARENT WHO WOULD RATHER PLAY THAN COOK

Out of the blue I recalled this lovely old book I used to check out from my public library as a kid.  Mud Pies and Other Recipes by Marjorie Winslow was a child's cookbook for making wood chip stew and dandelion lollipops and of course, the best kind of mud pies.  The copy from the library was stained with grass and dirt and lovingly used over and over again for every tea party with dolls any girl ever held.  I don't know what made me remember it, but I had to have it and lucky me it was not out of print.  I will have to haunt the used bookstores to find one that has all the lovely grass stains that I remember, but at least I have this one to share with my daughter when she is ready to start cooking for her dolls.

A GREAT GIFT FOR ANYONE WHO LIKES TO LAUGH

Mike Bribiglia is famous for his storytelling routines often broadcast on public radio's This American Life. This year he came out with a film autobiography called Sleepwalk with Me, basically his memoirs about sleepwalking when the stress hits life.  This is the book that the movie is based on--or perhaps this book is based on his movie which is based on his comedy/storytelling routines. I just read that the movie is available on i-tunes.  I will probably download and watch that since even though the book is funny, I don't think I am going to get to finish it but someone on your gift lift might love it!

I wish all my readers--all three of you--the best book filled Holiday season there could possibly be.  I am going to intentionally take a vacation until after the first of the year in order to possibly get some reading done.  I'll be back with more good reads in 2013.  Namaste.

~Esmerelda

Adventures of a One Breasted Woman by Susan Cummings

This was my latest Early Review.  Fifteen chapters of interrelated essays about coping in the aftermath of breast cancer.  The author reminds me of many of the women in my writing circle who write exclusively on one subject and have many personal points of view and interesting side angles to a single topic.

I was worried it would be a rehash of all the events leading up to and during her ordeal, but it was as described in the title: reclaiming her moxie after cancer.

Some of the chapters were more interesting and better written then others, but overall it was satisfying, and Susan Cummings does write some lovely prose.  I specifically liked the chapter on faith which deals with signs and symbols and feelings that some otherworldly presence is looking out for her (or are they?) and a great chapter on a specific friendship in four parts, which had a bittersweet ending.

Overall I began to feel sorry for  Susan because the sadnesses in her life (not even related to cancer) seemed to build up and build up, but she saved her good news for last and the memoir had a satisfying, upbeat ending.  A small coda at the end had her planning for her own funeral and death which seemed slightly macabre, but it was interesting food for thought.

I am lending this book to a few one breasted friends I know, but I am sure it is available on Amazon and will definitely save it for anyone who would like to read it.

In honor of the recent events

Like many in this country, I have been mesmerized by the recently past election.  I discovered this book a few months ago and have been slowly working my way through it.  It is fascinating and I thought I'd share it for folks who want to know and understand more about the presidency.

The Presidents Club is the group of past presidents who endeavor to help and advise the sitting president.  No matter the party, these men have a singular view that is shared by a very very few other men.  They form a camaraderie simply to support, assist and advise each other.  Fun fact:  did you know that the only time in modern history that we have been without a president's club is under Richard Nixon?  Or that it was former presidents that counseled Al Gore to give up the fight again George Bush in 2000?  They told him that to continue the challenge was to challenge the legitimacy of the presidency. In retrospect this seems like wise advice.

So this is the book about how Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea to help get the release of two journalists or how Richard Nixon had to lay low when Reagan was elected, but secretly sent him a lot of letters of advice or how Herbert Hoover, much reviled, came out of retirement to make peace with Truman and help feed Europe in the aftermath of World War II.

This is a fascinating historical account of a little examined group of men.  Available at your local bookstore or library.