As she relates in her fictionalized childhood memoir, Homesick, Fritz grew up in China yearning for the America she had never seen; here, 55 years after her departure at age 13, she returns—and finds, in a Hankou transformed, a few shards of her past: "China was not only part of me. . . I was part of China." What she turned up, most vividly in a playground whose benches were made of tombstones from the old foreign cemetery (where Fritz's sister had been buried), were "relics of the colonial period which," she correctly notes, "the Chinese would prefer to forget." But she was struck, too, by the discovery that the street on which she'd lived had figured in the 1911 revolution ("l had lived on a historic street and no one had ever told me"); by seeing, next to Zhou Enlai in a photograph, "the round smiling face" of a clergyman-friend of her father's. To her pleasure, the church where she had never been comfortable was now an acrobatics school ("there was only joy in the room") and the stuffy British School she'd attended was now a rest home for geologists! ("Were geologists people who became especially tired? I wondered.") Fritz has a lively historical imagination, as anyone familiar with her American-history re-creations for children well knows; she has the quality of remaining forever a child that she prizes (making telephone-contact with China-chum Andrea after publication of Homesick, she's disconcerted by this "new voice," relieved to hear "her old voice" at age 69); and she's engagingly unaffected—telling how she learned Chinese jokes in preparation for her trip, then how the jokes went off. Swatches of ancient and modern Chinese history are stitched into the narrative; and along with proclaiming both children and the elderly "the happiest people in China," Fritz makes some discreet observations about the constraints on those in between. The likeliest audience, though, consists of youngsters or adults taken with Homesick—who will share Fritz's satisfaction in her warm welcome, in no longer feeling the "outsider" and being able to call Hankou her hometown. (Below the relatively bland anecdotal/informational surface are some subtle sociocultural dynamics.)
Pub Date: April 5, 1985
ISBN: 0399211829
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1985
The beloved author of dozens of funny, wise books about escapades and troubles taking place on a finn ground of family affection has written an account of her own early years—very different from the happy childhoods she usually depicts, but told with the same immediacy and clarity. Born in Oregon of a father from pioneer stock and a "schoolmarm" mother, Beverly was early transplanted to Portland when the family farm failed. There, her father, who loved the outdoors, was condemned to years as a bank guard; her mother, intelligent but convention-bound and insensitive to the emotional needs of her family, stayed home and devoted herself to Beverly—making her clothes, choosing her friends, always intruding but rarely understanding. Beverly, yearning for the affection her parents may have felt but rarely expressed and sensitive to the nuance of every word from the time she could speak, lived in a neighborhood full of children but made few friends; she always wrote, receiving recognition early—and following an excellent piece of advice from her mother: keep it simple, and funny. This moving memoir of pain that Cleary is still struggling to forgive suggests that her happy stories—reminiscent of Little Women—are born of a yearning to re-create life as it might have been. Readers will find here not only a candid revelation of a favorite author but a fascinatingly detailed picture of Oregon in the 20s and 30s. Beautifully written; memorable.
Pub Date: April 22, 1988
ISBN: 0380727404
Page Count: 261
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1988
IN THE NEWS
Some gems for readers willing to get out the sieve.
Plodding through this mostly disposable collection of blog posts is claustrophobically tiring, like watching someone else reflected in a hall of mirrors.
The preponderance of young, white, female authors of commercial series fiction may explain the chatty, repetitious content and tone, larded with perishable pop-culture references. The view that blogs and social networks foster petty narcissism is reinforced here as authors reassure their teen selves that they’ll be hotties, win awards and be admitted to their first-choice colleges. Popularity, dating and looks are major themes. Writers congratulate themselves on surviving parental divorce or mean behavior from peers. Reflecting on one’s teens from a vantage point of very few years (one was 18 when she “looked back”) can sound self-congratulatory and pompous—asserting wisdom without having paid the dues of accumulated life experience. Tough personal stories often feel flat—the short form and high concept work against emotional depth. Scattered among the self-reverential messages are a few gems: Joseph Bruchac’s account of how a personal choice became a foundation for self-esteem; Carrie Jones’ refusal to be defined by stigma; Don Tate’s tough love–style straight talk to his messed-up teen self. Michael Griffo, Mike Jung and Mitali Perkins also avoid cute-speak, conveying genuine feeling and the deeper complexity and contradictions of life as it’s lived, not just blogged.
Some gems for readers willing to get out the sieve. (Nonfiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-936976-21-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Zest Books
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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