by Rebecca McClanahan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 28, 2013
The account of a writer's quest to understand her place in the grand generational scheme of her family.
Poet McClanahan (Deep Light, 2007, etc.) was the family "archive junkie [and] keeper of all things outdated and moldy.” Then one day, she realized that for all her apparent knowledge, the truth about her forebears' lives was "wider and deeper" than she realized. She begins her account by delving into the pages of her Great Aunt Bessie's 1897 diary, interweaving actual fragments from it with her own imaginative reconstructions of Bessie's life in rural Indiana. McClanahan then builds on the day-to-day details of Bessie’s letters, pictures and other family documents to construct a narrative that depicts a hardworking family of farmers and day laborers who helped tame the Indiana frontier and build its cities. She includes a whole cast of colorful family characters but emphasizes the relationships between and among the females, including Bessie, her sister, their mother and the author’s mother; it was the women who unwittingly served as family chroniclers. Inevitably, McClanahan's research uncovers painful secrets, including her grandmother's possible participation in Women of the KKK. The narrative is complex, with the author attempting to depict several generations within a family but also place that family within larger historical contexts. Because it focuses on the minutiae of lived reality (especially in the first half of the text) and tries to do too much at once, it may leave readers—except perhaps those with a specific interest in early Hoosier social history—in a knot of frustration. Moving at times, but narratively overreaching.
Pub Date: March 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-253-00859-6
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Indiana Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Share your opinion of this book
More by Rebecca McClanahan
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.