bookshelf

GROWING UP GOLEM

Name: GROWING UP GOLEM
Author: Donna Minkowitz
ISBN: 978-1-936833-60-3

HOW I SURVIVED MY MOTHER, BROOKLYN, AND SOME REALLY BAD DATES

by Donna Minkowitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 25, 2013

Surviving these experiences and breaking free of her golem nature is what drives the second half of the book, along with the...

bookshelf

A former Village Voice reporter known for her writing on gay and lesbian issues in the 1980s and ’90s holds nothing back in describing her disturbing childhood, relationships and sex life, writing career and painful disability.

Minkowitz’s first memoir, Ferocious Romance (1998), won the Lambda Literary Award. Here, the author employs the same brutal introspection and clever humor, but this book is much more personal and sexually explicit in content. Early on, the author establishes the trope that she is her mother’s golem, an artificial person brought to life through Jewish mysticism to serve its creator. She uses this form of magical realism to explain her disconnected relationship to her body, her mother’s power over her and her willingness to be abused, but she also allows it to justify actions of her own that could otherwise be perceived as selfish or mean. As a child, Minkowitz was hit by her father and forced to tell her mother she looked sexy dancing naked, among other inappropriate exchanges. Obsessed with sex, lying and dying, her mother was a philosophy professor who dominated each of the nearly dozen homes in which the family lived while the author was growing up. Minkowitz escaped to attend Yale before writing for the Voice, where she enjoyed making a difference as a journalist and activist. In her mid-30s, life started unraveling. Relationships with her therapist, best friend and sister crashed and burned. She started seeing a married mother of two, watched her own mother die slowly and experienced the sudden onset of repetitive strain injury, a musculoskeletal condition that prevented her from writing (she now uses voice dictation software) and performing basic domestic tasks.

Surviving these experiences and breaking free of her golem nature is what drives the second half of the book, along with the defiant, playful energy Minkowitz brings to writing about her dark and difficult past. Intelligent but not for the prudish or fainthearted.

Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-936833-60-3

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Magnus Books

Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2014

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

bookshelf

NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

bookshelf

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

bookshelf

TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

bookshelf

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.