No comments about Boathouse Days.

5 comments about Half the House.

1. In Half the House Mr. Hoffman, like any good writer, is intimately concerned with truth, the minute, daily, specific reality of his experience in the rustbelt of Allentown, PA, in the nineteen fifties in working class America. His style is careful, descriptive, direct, and poetic -- but not personal. Half the House is written, as Mr. Hoffman is also a well-published poet, with detachment, technique, and maturity. Of the several memoirs I have read this year, only Half the House resolves its issues, its grimness, its pain in a health-promoting, realistic, peace-giving redemption. That final, moving scene between defensive father and guilty son, wherein each gives a little, then alot, then communicate genuinely and respectfully dissolving forty years of impediment to love, is the kind of real life forgiveness all of us only dare dream of. Half the House does it. As Nabokov once said it takes a deep spiritual sense to create a masterpiece. Half the House has the depth. Ron Morin



2. Richard Hoffman is a brilliant writer, and quite a good teacher as well. My friend David says that he finds the book arousing. hehe Way to go Mr. Hoffman. The New York State Summer Young WriterInstitute Rules! Shout out to all of my peeps! AAAmennn



3. This book was easy reading. I read this book in one night. It thankfully left out the details of the child abuse. Though it tends to jump around, and over many years, it is quite clear as to what happened. The author is telling his story, a very brave one to tell. But the importance of this book is really about how TELLING your story, can set others free. Its also about confronting your abuser, and how THAT can set yourself free. Free of secrets. Free of lies. Lies you tell others, and ones you may tell yourself.



4. Without flinching from the truth, this book shows that it IS possible to break the circle of abuse: to understand, to love, to forgive, to recover, and to go on loving and nurturing those who are dear. The story of Hoffman's growing up with two terminally ill brothers, a father sometimes unable to control his rage, a mother who copes by shutting out memories, and a sexually abusive coach, is painful but ultimately hopeful.



5. This book seems slightly shrouded by its sensational elements. 'Boy has troubled life - is abused, grieves the death of half of his family, suffers from alcoholism, etc.' These reviews and synopsis are accurate, and have probably/hopefully given the book a wider readership that it so deserves.
   I hope the inherent wisdom and subtlety beautiful writing have not been brushed aside in favor of the memoir's striking subject matter.
   I don't think I've ever felt aspects of childhood so perfectly captured in the innocent, yet curious mind of a child than in this book. Hoffman's inherent wisdom is deepened only by his perfect portrayal of how it feels to be young. Anyone who has considered their own childhood can relate to his delicate observations. The complexities and simple misunderstandings, yet intuitive honesty, of a child are the strongest parts to this book.
   I highly recommend it to anyone. The writing is straightforward yet elegant. Hoffman is a brilliant man and you can see his brilliance come together through his experiences. It truly is "a book of unsparing and at times brutal candor," consistent throughout the entire courageous memoir. There is true depth to this piece, beyond its traumatic subject matter, and Hoffman is truly speaking to everyone in his modest bildungsroman. Definitely a captiving book that you want to read all at once just to absorb its strength.

3 comments about Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir.

1. This culinary memoir of the author's childhood in Barbados describes his early introduction to cooking, his involvement with native dishes, and his progress in becoming a cook. Don't look for recipes here; it's more a memoir and biography of Barbados cooking, though descriptions of preparing dishes are lovingly detailed and rival James Beard's American presentations.



2. This delightful book evokes the language and spirit of Barbados. The author weaves in tales of growing up in Barbados with memories of the food, 'hot cuisine', that fashioned his childhood. For anyone who has visited the island, this will surely bring back fond and enticing memories. Read the book, visit Barbados!



3. The more acquainted you are with the food rituals of West Indians (and Bajans in particular), the more you should restrain yourself from reading this book in public. You will grin, chuckle and gafaw, and people will stare at you.

1 comments about A Tobacco Farmer's Daughter.

1. I think that this book is so very interesting. It hold your interest from cover to cover. When you start reading it, you have to finish. I would tell anyone to invest in this book for one day, it will be a valuable book, one that goes down in history.

No comments about The Island's True Child.

5 comments about Meyebela: My Bengali Girlhood.

1. Taslima Nasrin�s is a strong competent voice from Bangladesh. She has been in exile ever since her controversial book "Lajja" or "Shame" about Muslim persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh caused a fatwa to be issued against her. Meyebela, My Bengali Girlhood: A Memoir of Growing up Female in a Muslim World is Nasrin�s heart-wrenching account of a desperate childhood in Mymensingh, a relatively small town in Bangladesh.

   In this memoir (one of two volumes), Nasrin openly questions her religion, Islam, and its discrimination against women. Her sad and depressing childhood was an unfortunate byproduct of a unique combination of cruel elements, one of which was a repressive society where "I was simply supposed to accept�without asking questions�whatever the grownups decided to bestow on me, be it punishment or reward." Taslima was treated like a second-class citizen all throughout and horrifically abused by her uncles. Add to these, Nasrin had very unstable parents�a mother who was driven to religious extremism by a philandering father and a father who was extremely harsh yet very insistent on education. Having had his first two sons fail his "expectations", he pinned all his hopes on young Taslima and her sister, Yasmin. The girls were denied all social interaction (Nasrin�s father had high walls built around the house so the girls could not look beyond it and get distracted) and the books were made to be their only focus.

   Nasrin�s memoir, which is set against the Bangladesh war for independence, makes some very important points about religion and a girl�s role in an oppressive society. Like a flood of memories though, her memoir seems to shift out of focus occasionally. Towards the end, parts of her statements get to be repetitive.

   Taslima Nasrin did become a doctor and lived up to her father�s expectations. In that sense, he "won". But eventually Nasrin did manage to find her own voice-- one that continues to speak powerfully on behalf of oppressed women all over the world.

   Nasrin in her memoir tells us what life truly is like for many girls around the world. It is our duty to listen. It is sad though that we can often do little more than be outraged.




2. I usually enjoy reading books by women writers from the Indian subcontinent. This was one book that could not hold my attention - badly written, repetitive, and unnecessarily lengthy: a tedious read. Ms. Nasrin sounds like a manipulative child - she knows what the West wants to hear and makes too much of an effort to please.



3. A very interesting book, not always fun to read and maybe like the first reviewer says not always really well, or at least tightly, written. However, the account of this girlhood was shocking to me. I think now I understand feminism much better then before. And even though I've spent some time in Bangladesh, I now feel like I understand life in Bangladesh much better than before as well. I feel it was extremely worthwhile reading this book. It taught me a lot about how most of the world lives.



4. My husband is Bangladeshi, so I was interested in reading this book. The book is interesting in providing an insight into a dysfunctional, abusive home and childhood. It makes clear the critical need for third world countries to seriously address the issue of abuse and oppression of women. However, the book gets repetitive and tiresome after a while.

   The reason I am giving the book only two stars is because it treats all of Bangladesh and all of Islam as one-dimensional. We are left assuming everyone is like that. Both of my husband's sisters have graduate degrees and his mother was head of the household, even though his father had spent a decade studying religion in an Islamic school. There wasn't any abuse and no prohibition against his sister's playing outdoors. They didn't wear head coverings either.
   
   The subtitle A Memoir of Growing Up Female in a Muslim world is misleading. Her story unfortunately is common for females all over the third world including India, China, South America, Africa, and to a lesser extent the US and Europe. Domination and abuse of women knows no borders and is practiced by members of all faiths. Nasrin is not objective and makes a lot of generalizations about Islam being the problem. I am Christian but I also grew up with a domineering father. Nasrin, unfortunately, has alienated her countrymen instead of engaging them.




5. I'll be brief since one reviewer elucidated my points quite well.

   There's no doubt that Taslima Nasrin will go down in history was one of the greatest writers the south Asian community has even produced. She has clear vision on contemporary issues within the south Asian world. Her recent novel is of course a "magnum Opus"that will be remembered by many. My only contention is that she tends to have a rather fervid tendency to over-generalize excessively. At times her statements about Islam in the book contradict her statements in speeches and other prints. Her critique of religion regurgitates old-fashioned arguments that stymies the reader( at least this reviewer). A good biography indeed. However, don't use it as a critique or religion.

No comments about Girl From Stone Lake.

1 comments about When Montana and I Were Young: A Frontier Childhood (Women in the West).

1. This is a remarkable book. It is a primary account of a child's life growing up in Montana and Canada in the early part of the twentieth century. Margaret (Peggy) Bell's life spanned some 94 years, from 1888-1982, and her story is as exciting and troubling as any account one is likely to read, fiction or non-fiction. That the book is edited by Mary Clearman Blew makes it not only highly readable but lends it undeniable credibility.

   Bell's account of growing up on the high plains of Montana and Canada is a rare, first person account of life on the frontier with it's numerous hardships, grinding poverty, and ultimate struggle to retain her mind and spirit that will break your heart and make you shout for joy...sometimes within a few paragraphs or pages. In a straight forward, honest, almost stoic manner she describes the many life lessons she learned and discusses a subject that is rarely seen in print in the literature of the period: the abuse, sexual and otherwise, she experienced at the hands of her uncle and stepfather. This is an amazing book that chronicles the life experiences of a resilient woman in a man's world that lived to understand who she was, where she came from, and what it all meant. That she could tell such a story without self pity or sentimental, touchy-feely themes is remarkable. Brutally frank, honest and ultimately uplifting.

5 comments about Better Than Sane: Tales from a Dangling Girl.

1. Alison Rose is a real writer. Better Than Sane:Tales from a Dangling Girl is literature, which is hard to come by these days.
   Rose knows what friendship is. I have memorized a sentence she wrote about the writer Harold Brodkey: "If I have, say, twenty fragments of my mind all to myself, and I give ten to Harold, then half of them are taken care of for a few hours. Then I have only half the trouble, half the isolation. A real luxury." In the chapter "Dangling Girl," Rose's loyal friend Francine flies in from Atlanta to help Alison pack up her office at The New Yorker. The description is sad and charming and so beautiful that I could feel the decades of friendship, as if I had been in the office with them. On the last moving day, the brilliant writer, Renata Adler,(there is a sublime Adler quote in the epigraph)takes the photographs of George Trow and Harold Brodkey off the wall, a final goodbye. Parts of Better Than Sane are elegiac, but all of it is written in prose that, elegiac or not, brings happiness to a serious reader. We need Better Than Sane in our uncertain world.



2. I love The New Yorker. Each week, it's like a precious gift, and I relish every page, particularly 'Talk of the Town'. So one can imagine my delight at the prospect of a book by Alison Rose. Sadly, I feel that with her book she really drove home the fact that the ability to type does not mean one should write a book.
   
   This is the long, minutely detailed story of an apparently very beautiful woman who finds herself incredibly fascinating. Maybe she is truly fascinating, and just can't convey it through writing. Maybe this is why someone at Knopf deemed it acceptable to publish this excruciating memoir and send it out into the world. Or maybe Alison was just sleeping with the right person at the right time. Again.
   
   In closing, I would like to cite the sentence that pushed me over the edge, that transformed me from irritated non-fan into sarcastic review-writer: "The day before he made the birthday card for Puppy-I'd brought her into the office and introduced her to some writers and editors-I was carrying her under her front legs, her dog ankles were crossed, and Harold said, 'She should be wearing a skirt'." This is the type of statement people make in passing four hundred times a day. I have probably said this very thing to someone ahead of me in line at the post office. It doesn't make for interesting reading, and that's a shame because this book is comprised of similar sentences. God, the boredom.



3. I read Better Than Sane: Tales from a Dangling Girl all the way through, in one sitting. I couldn't put it down. The book is original, beautiful, droll (as Rose would say), elegiac and perfect. It is also sexy. Better Than Sane is a piece of literature, something people aren't accustomed to anymore. Anyone who doesn't agree with me doesn't know what literature is. Rose has created an entire set of characters here. Their interactions made me a little bored with my own life. Through the dialogue (there isn't dialogue like this in any book I can think of)and the prose itself, the reader understands how Alison Rose has survived. She was "rescued by her own actions and didn't get killed," as George Trow, her mentor at The New Yorker and writer of "Within the Context of No Context" said to
   her. An editor at the magazine, where Rose became a staff writer,
   said to her, "You see beyond." She does.



4. I think, from reading the other customer reviews of this book, that this must be one that you either love, or hate. Put me in the latter category. There was great potential in this book - Alison Rose is clearly a good writer, she has brushed up against many other good writers and interesting people, and led an unconventional life. But. Arrgggh! She tells us only the faintest of details, skips around in time so it is difficult to piece together what happened when, and gives us no context for her actions or her memories. She has had a devastating effect on others - men and women - in her life (judging from what she tells us, anyway). But there's no real indication of WHY she was able to captivate so many interesting, intelligent and prominent people.



5. I usually only review books that I absolutely love- but in this case I wanted to read this tome in one night and be done with it... Alison has a beautiful and sometimes seductive and brilliant way of stringing thoughts together- an idiosyncratic way of descriptive device. Five stars for individuality and fine form.
   The issue that I think most detractors have is the content and viewpoint of this clearly unfeminist female who in current jargon "gave all of her power away" to captivating and famous intellectuals - and I agree it's unclear the extent of the physical affairs that she was having - although there was plenty of mind games and heady flirtation and this was the food of her life- approval from men .So, if it's not your bag then you probably won't like the book-The men seem pompous smug and peurile to me, but I wasn't there. Everyone has their own life to live and Alison Rose shouldn't be judged to harshly for her choices. Certainly the game was a two way street and these New yorker men loved having their err egos stroked.To readers I say "try it , you might like it, and if not then she's just not your cuppa. "

2 comments about The Hooligan's Return: A Memoir.

1. This is a wonderful, if difficult book. It cronicles the author's life. Norman Manea suffered from both the Holocaust and Communism. Being Jewish, he and his family were deported during the Second World War to a concentration camp set up by Romania's fascist regime (General Ion Antonescu, Hitler's ally) in Transnistria, where several hundred thousand Jews were imprisoned and died in horrible circumstances. Luckily he survived the KZ and returned to Romania. Later on, when he had become a writer, he was declared enemy of the state and a 'hooligan' by Romania's Communists, because he had dared criticize the antisemitic government in an article. (Another fascinating Romanian-Jewish writer, Mihail Sebastian (see his Jurnal) was described as a 'hooligan' by antisemits in a literary scandal back in the 30's - the term has deep connotations for Manea). His relationship to his homeland remained troubled even after he left Romania in the 80's, settling down in New York as a professor for literature (he teaches at Bard College). Although he is one of Romania's best writers, his country's literary elite treats him with a certain embarassment. He can be compared in this respect to Imre Kertesz's relationship with Hungary.
   I liked this book not only because of all the detailed, multi-faceted and subtle description of these events, but also because it is an honest and selfironical autobiography. Manea is a reluctant autobiographer. My feeling is that he wrote this book out of duty; not to brag about his past, rather to pay tribute to those he loved and to remind the world of the terrible journey he has been through - a very typical journey for Jews and many East Europeans in the 20th century...

   P.S. If this book is superfluous, then so are the books by e.g. Anne Frank, Primo Levy and Mihail Sebastian. Good luck in burning them!




2. Francine Prose's blurb says it all: check it out on the inside cover of this book. THR is a multi-layered memoir that does not always proceed in chronological fashion. This story of a Romanian exile's return to his homeland is more substantial and real than Romanian-born writer Andrei Codrescu (who changed his surname from Perlmutter to "Codrescu," probably to appear more exotic in the US). When Norman Manea fears encountering the staff at the Intercontinental Hotel in Bucharest, he has REAL reason to, unlike the poseur "Codrescu," who likes to fancy himself a revolutionary. In 1992, Manea penned a controversial essay on M. Eliad, a conflicted man whose relations with Romania's ultranational Iron Guard caused him much intrapersonal conflict. Manea also blew the whistle then on the RO community in chicago where a significant community of IG sympathizers still carry the flame today. In fact, he intimates, there may yet be a connection between the IG/Chicago Legionnaires and the Securitate in RO even today. Dangerous stuff even in these enlightened times some 60+ years later after the changing of the fascist/communistic guard in RO. Debates of this type go on in all eastern European countries, as they begin to sort thru their messy post-fascist/post-communist pasts; combine this with the added and ironical baggage of having many former Party leaders morph into "democratic" leaders. Absurdity never dies. Manea inspires his readers to delve into the works of other RO writers like Cioran, Paul Celan, I. Culianu, Petru Cretia...so Francine Prose sums things up neatly with her observation that "THR operates on so many levels that finally, it eludes all classification." Well said.