Therapeutic for the editor and a significant bounty for readers.
An introspective, provocative collection of firsthand accounts of siblinghood’s joys and pains.
Editor Albert (The Book of Dahlia, 2008, etc.) admits that her endeavor was cathartic, forcing her to process years of stressful domestic melodrama. She considers herself an only child, though she grew up with two brothers (“the sun and moon of my earliest memories”)—one died young and the other offered constant disappointment, resulting in a painful estrangement. Credited as the “unsung heroes of our psychological development,” the brothers and sisters gathered here range from the good to the bad, the infuriating to the beloved, leaving the meandering and the misunderstood to tug at readers’ heartstrings. Outspoken author Steve Almond (Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, 2010, etc.) leads off with childhood memories of being cruelly terrorized by his brothers, which bled into his adult life, where all three now (barely) communicate “in a stunted, regressive manner.” Animation artist Eric Orner offers a skillfully drawn, bittersweet portrait of a ’70s summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard spent consoling his younger brother Peter as their two bickering parents announced a divorce. Novelist Peter Orner (The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, 2007, etc.) counters his brother’s perspective by earnestly correlating his memories to the Kennedy Chappaquiddick tragedy. While many essays adeptly form quick, potent family snapshots—e.g., Jay Nicorvo’s nostalgic teenaged rooftop adventure—especially revelatory are the stories of siblings who’ve bonded with each other over life-changing decisions. New Yorker staffer Mary Norris’s brother Dennis guided his sister incrementally through his transsexual transformation to become Dee. T Cooper corners his brother, a former rocker, by e-mail with 38 probing questions that end up enlightening them both on adoption, their parents, guns and his life as a policeman. Forty-something Jewish sisters Jill and Faith Soloway take the same Q&A approach, querying each other on their inner-city Chicago upbringing, Jill’s life as an Emmy-winning TV producer and Faith’s single-motherhood and lesbianism. Other contributors include Etgar Keret, Nalini Jones and Rebecca Wolff.
Therapeutic for the editor and a significant bounty for readers.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-5472-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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
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