{Review}: Lust and Wonder

Augusten Burroughs has an enviable knack for introspection and self-awareness. He has also has a writing voice that made me wonder at first if I were reading fiction or a memoir--at some points, I actually was not 100% confident Lust & Wonder was a memoir! Burroughs manages to make himself a sympathetic character, though I have a feeling that if I knew him in real life, I probably would not stand him. And he knows it. A funny, self-deprecating story that had me rooting for a marginally unlikeable person, I was genuinely disappointed when I reached the end and there was nothing more to read. 

Lust & Wonder is out from St. Martin's Press on March 29th but can be pre-ordered on Amazon. 

{I received a copy of this book for review purposes from NetGalley. There are affiliate links in this post.}

Thrilling: A Series of Vignettes Inspired by Under Magnolia by Frances Mayes

On my pink two-wheeler, I coast down a steep ramp off an overpass, ahead of my family. Flying down, and picking up speed, I'm gripped by both thrill and fear. What happens at the bottom? Things are moving fast, the leafy trees are green blurs. I find myself on the ground, with both knees opened and blood pouring out.  I probably cried. I definitely had to finish the ride home, trailing behind my family now. 
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A few years later, in a new neighborhood, I do a short run down a dirt hill that leads into a cul-de-sac, this time on a ten speed road bike. The neighborhood kids and I run down, and drag the bikes back up, and run down again. Coming down off the hill, I deftly turn into the circle and coast around before heading back up the hill. No bloody knees but the same thrill. 
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Many more years later, I ride up onto the George Washington Bridge approach to the pedestrian path, huffing and puffing up a minor ascent until it flattens out somewhat and I can enjoy the view of the mighty Hudson stretched out below, snaking its way north and south, as far as the eye can see. I crest the bridge and start the descent into Fort Lee, following a pack of riders in this charity ride. It's not such a big hill and I relax a little. Then, comes a climb up to the start of a route that takes us through Englewood. I stop at the top of the hill, look down at the long slope unfurling before me, take a deep breath to gather my nerve and take off, not sure where this hill is going to end. Always, the thrill. 
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2004. In a sleepy coastal town in Ecuador, popular with surfers, I borrow a bike of questionable safety from the hostel while my friends sleep. I head off down the road to seek out a dirt hill we had driven past the day before. As soon as I saw that hill, I knew I wanted to ride down it. I huffed and puffed my way to the top, on this crappy bike that probably hadn't been tuned up ever. At the top, I prepared for descent. From that vantage point, I could see that the hill was deeply and erratically rutted which gave me pause. But 24 year olds have a lot of confidence, and they feel invincible besides. And I had to get back down anyway. I took off, going slow and then picking up speed as I lost my trepidation. Then, I was going too fast. I lightly squeezed the brakes  in an attempt to slow down, but of course, of course, the brakes were shot. I leaned back, letting one foot dangle down to slow my descent. I hit a rut and I flew over the handlebars, landing with a sickening thud, my temple bouncing off the ground. I lay there, sprawled out and very still, wondering if anything was broken, besides my dignity. I gingerly picked myself and examined myself for damage. Bloody knees. Bloody elbows. But I can walk. I push the bike down the rest of the way, and drag myself back to the hostel. I return the bike, the hostel owners gasping and fretting over me. I wave them off. Back in the room, a stream of f-bombs comes pouring out of my mouth, waking my friends from their hungover stupor. I look in the mirror and realize why the hostel owners had gasped. My very first black eye. 

Thrilling, yes. 




This post was inspired by Under Magnolia by Frances Mayes, a memoir of her return to her roots in the South. Join From Left to Write on April 30th as we discuss Under Magnolia. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes. This post contains affiliate links. 

{Review} Recipes for a Beautiful Life: A Memoir in Stories

Once upon a time, Henry and I decided to make a go of it in Western Massachusetts. Alice was just a baby then, maybe 18 months old, and I was seven months pregnant. Henry found a job in Greenfield, twenty minutes north of Northampton, and I left it up to him find an apartment. He found a newly renovated one bedroom on Bank Row, a few doors down from Main Street, facing the town green and around the corner from our favorite restaurant, Hope and Olive.

On a blustery January day, I loaded Alice and my extremely pregnant self into our little green Mazda protege, the trunk and backseat bulging with stuff that was too small to go into the moving truck, and off we went to Greenfield, where we met Henry and my mother outside our new apartment.

That was the beginning of the longest, most amazing year of my life. I look back and can hardly believe it was only a year. It feels like a lifetime. Reading Rebecca Barry's memoir, Recipes for a Beautiful Life,  that year comes rushing back. The move from big city to small city, surrounded by farmland, being poor in money but rich in friendship and love, and the natural phenomenons of the world that make you eternally grateful to be alive. Each story in Barry's memoir is redeemed by the kind of self-discovery that only comes when nothing's easy.

Be grateful. 

Hold space. 

Open your heart. 

Think small. 

Think big. 

This is hard, Barry realizes, but this is good.

Her husband tells her the book she plans to write, the book she did write, sounds like a lot of complaining. He's not wrong but for every complaint, every whine, every "woe is me," there is redemption. There is also much humor because one does not survive motherhood in the early years without a sense of humor and humility.

This is not a parenting book, but those who are in the thick of early motherhood will appreciate this book, this Not-A-How-To-How-To collection of stories that expose the sordid details of marriage and parenthood, the ones that lie behind the scenes of a life that seems romantic and wonderful and magical to everyone else. And the stories are funny because they are true. I know Rebecca Barry. I am Rebecca Barry. I know dozens of Rebecca Barrys. We Rebecca Barrys dream a world of farm shares, starlit summer skies, neighborhood coffeeshops, family nearby, friends at the ready with wine and cheese and bread and company.

Our dream ended after a year and we slunk back to New York, slightly depressed but also slightly relieved to be not-poor again. Despite our own failed attempt, I cheered Rebecca Barry on and willed her to stick it out, see it through, if only so I could live vicariously through her for as long as the book lasted.

Recipes for a Beautiful Life: A Memoir in Stories by Rebecca Barry is out from Simon & Schuster in April 2015. 

{I received an Advanced Reader's Copy of this book for review purposes. This post contains affiliate links.}

A Mirror, Almost.

To be quite honest, I'd never heard of Andie Mitchell or her blog until I saw a Facebook post about her memoir, It Was Me All Along but when I read the excerpt, I recognized myself immediately. Never had I read anything describing my struggle with food and eating. I'm not very good at articulating my feelings or verbalizing my introspection. Part of it is self-consciousness. I don't like to focus attention on those aspects of myself that are negative. It feels like self-vicitmization, in a way, which is something I CANNOT stand, either in myself or others!
But in this touching, grounded, earnest memoir, I found the words that describe the emotional roller coaster that is my relationship with food. My childhood was not anything like Andie's but it was marked by periods of turbulence, as all childhoods are.  Andie astutely draws the line between her early memories of growing up in a working class home with an alcoholic father and an overworked mother, and her increasing weight gain caused by overeating and bingeing. She adeptly describes the thought process and flood of emotions that drive the decision to overeat and I was startled to find that I knew EXACTLY what she meant. I had experienced the very same phenomenon many times over, and still do.
I think it takes a special kind of person to put herself out there in the most vulnerable of ways, in a society that finds it embarrassing and shameful to talk about fatness, to be fat, even. I usually read memoirs to explore a perspective that is unknown to me, but this time, I read a memoir to understand myself better.

{I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review. This post contains affiliate links.}

Little Failure

I admit, I've had Gary Shteyngart's novels on my To Read list for a long time, and I did start Super Sad True Love Story but I never managed to finish it. I couldn't get into it, though the writing was excellent and funny. Little Failure, his memoir, was the opposite experience-- I couldn't get enough of the book. It was the first book in a long time that I finished in less than week. Reading while nursing, reading before bed, reading when I woke up, reading while waiting for Stella to get out of school. All the time, reading until I got down to the last word.
I am not an immigrant. My father is not an immigrant. Even my grandfather was not an immigrant--his siblings were born in Ukraine but he was first generation, 5 months old at the time his family was first counted in the census. But we are Asheknazi Jews, and that comes with a particular brand of humor that can be hard to understand if you don't grow up surrounded by it. Jews often temper tragedy and sadness with brevity, with self-deprecating humor, sentimentalism and wit. It's a form of emotional and spiritual survival that evolves out of being persecuted by someone, somewhere in every millenia since the beginning of time. Though nothing about Shtyengart's life is intimitely familiar to me, I immediately understood the humor imbued in this book. There is comedy in everything. The comedy is in the telling, the voice, the tone, the ability to poke fun at onesself, and to temper pride with self-loathing. The constant comparisons to Woody Allen are no accident.
But more than just a memoir of an immigrant child, the book is also the story of Shteyngart's discovery that he is a writer, and a good one at that.  For Shteyngart, writing is a natural consquence of being an only child who spends a lot of time in his own head. The stories have to come out eventually and when he realizes that his storytelling, inspired by his father's own creative tales, is the ticket to acceptance from his American peers, there is motivation to keep the stories coming, a sensation not much different from the abused who supplicates his abuser to keep himself alive. As long as Shteyngart can tell his funny, fantastic stories, his status remains elevated enough to keep the bullies at bay for a short while.
Little Failure is, at base, a poignant, funny, bittersweet tale of one boy's search for love and redemption from those most hard-pressed to give it to him.

{I recieved an egalley from NetGalley for review purposes. I have not been compensated for this review and all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links.}