A fascinating, magnificently epic family saga told by a gifted storyteller.
Picone describes how, decades after her abusive mother cast her out, she attempted to reunite with her estranged family—including her now–Alzheimer’s-stricken mother.
Quiet, sensitive Picone and her four siblings spent their New York City childhood being tormented by Eva, their Colombian-born mother. Yet Picone simultaneously longed for her mother’s love, especially after her father’s death. When a handsome older man asked 17-year-old Picone to marry him following an innocent courtship, Eva coldly cast her daughter out of the family. Picone remained shattered by Eva’s decision for decades, but after her stepfather’s funeral, she strived to reconnect with her family. Unfortunately, her siblings responded with varying degrees of hostility, having long believed Eva’s slanderous (and false) tales about their sister. Picone focused on rebuilding a relationship with her mother, but Alzheimer’s disease was ravaging her, leaving the matriarch increasingly confused and ill while forcing Picone and her combative older sister Julia to share caregiver responsibilities in Eva’s crumbling Queens house. Two additional narratives then unfold: poems describing Picone’s childhood, starting with her earliest memory and circling back to her heart-wrenching abandonment; and the histories of her mother, her Colombian and Italian grandmothers, and Picone’s charming but womanizing father, recounted by Eva in rare moments of lucidity. In this exquisitely beautiful, haunting debut memoir, Picone weaves a personal story of familial alienation together with sharp, unforgettable portraits of Colombian social hierarchy, the American immigrant experience and post–World War II life. The complex dance of family dynamics rises to life, instantly ensnaring readers. Whether it’s Picone arguing with Julia over their mother’s prognosis or Eva’s painful transition from upper-class Colombian to divorced American immigrant, Picone approaches every character—even herself—with resolute compassion and unflinching honesty. Occasionally, the story steers near self-pity in some distressing scenes, but it never fully falls into that trap. Between the story’s rich layers and Picone’s captivating writing style, this memoir and its nuanced characters will carve a place in readers’ minds.
A fascinating, magnificently epic family saga told by a gifted storyteller.Pub Date: March 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4923-0442-5
Page Count: 440
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.
When advertising executive Schroff answered a child’s request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to “two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams” that were “somehow meant to be friends” to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a “substitute parent,” and she does not judge Maurice’s mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice. For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4251-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
