5 comments about Limbo: A Memoir.

1. Since writing my own memoir, BABY CATCHER: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife (Scribner 2002), I have been studying the style of other memorists. I found Ansay's prose lyrical, mesmerizing, and almost poetic throughout this beautiful book. To be able to write about her losses as a result of a still-mysterious illness similar to MS, with calmness and lack of hyperbole, is admirable and enviable. From the very beginning you know this story doesn't have a happy outcome, but at no time did I feel depressed. On some level, I rejoiced for this author, for her own successes and insight and hope and the joy in small gains, small triumphs over her difficulties. Limbo is a love story, an admirable one. I wish this author lived next door to me. I would sit at her feet in awe and bake her cookies and bread at every opportunity. May she continue to write and write and write.



2. 
   "The abyss opens beneath our feet, and we leap it,
   *not* because we are particularly brave, but simply
   because we must. We land in a whole new country. We
   put on its clothing, learn its customs, begin again .
   . . ."
   
   This book is the saga of one person's approach to the
   abyss, her eventual leap, and the long process of
   resettlement in the "whole new country" -- a locale in
   which she resides with grace and wisdom.
   
   The book is also a succinct autobiography,
   selective in its particulars. While it begins and ends with the author's transition to chronic disability, its substantial midsection constitutes one long flashback to her most
   formative years. In these pages, she allows us ever so gradually past the periphery and closer to the essence of her active, exploratory childhood and her "good-girl" adolescence in the small community of Port Washington, Wisconsin.
   
   Especially subtle and well-crafted
   are the evolving portraits of the most influential
   people in her life: the feisty, sometimes fiery
   immigrant grandparents; the mother who drives long
   distances (often through the chilliest northern landscapes, in an unheated car) to deliver the author
   to the best available music lessons; perhaps most endearing, in the end, the taciturn breadwinner-father
   -- for it is her father's story, once his speech begins to flow in the face of his daughter's suffering, that ultimately anchors, even permits the telling of, her own story. As Ansay flowers into full personhood, becoming ever more accessible and sympathetic to the reader -- so does he: a man whose life was,likewise, disrupted and derailed by serious illness in his youth. They share a certain resigned if sorrowful firsthand knowledge, as well as a deep camaraderie, borne of their historical social isolation and gratuitous suffering
   
   As the author recounts her life, she mentions almost in passing -- confessing to what she seems to
   consider an amateurish avocation -- that she has written some poetry early on. However modest she herself may consider those early efforts, a fine poetic sensibility is evident throughout the description of her odyssey to the edge
   of the abyss and beyond: the rhythmic flow and careful patterning of her prose, her well-honed capacity for understatement and nuance.
   
   No doubt her writing has also been influenced by her
   long and rigorous training in music. Until she is
   stricken by the still-undiagnosed (demyelinating?)
   disorder that forces her to leave the Peabody
   Conservatory and abandon her longtime dream -- a career as a concert pianist -- music is her daily regimen, even obsession. It becomes her spiritual sustenance as well: "the purest language I knew, the bridge between what I was supposed to believe and what I knew in my heart to be true." The transition to a whole new language -- to literature and the writing of novels -- becomes her ultimate redemption and salvation; inevitably, her first language informs her second.
   
   It is that first and dearest language -- the hours of grueling piano practice -- the push for a better instrument, a better instructor, a scholarship -- that carries her safely through the Port Washington years. Even in childhood, though, we see evidence of other strengths, such as her keen observational powers, her sensitivity to sensory input. We see through her young eyes the lush checkerboard of Wisconsin farmland, viewed from a child's perch on a bicylcle -- the squares reflecting the whole ordered lifestyle of immigrant farmers, the clearly delineated boundaries of their industrious and God-fearing moral code. We come to know, too, through the author's neurons and receptors, the omnipresence of Lake Michigan in its many moods; at a certain season, mentally strolling its beaches beside her, we can almost inhale the rich rankness of the alewives.
   
   We also come to see how asphyxiating a small community can be in terms of its moral strictures -- its church-bound preoccupations -- and we catch glimpses of its predictably sinister underbelly. Ansay writes of growing up amid a vast, extended Catholic family, primarily originating in Luxembourg and Germany. The somewhat monolithic family, the insular and even xenophobic community (its first Jewish family arrives during Ansay's eighties-childhood, but soon returns to the city) impresses upon her relentlessly the obligation not to make waves, never to stand out too noticeably or think too highly of oneself.
   
   Thus, as she navigates an adolescence both gifted and
   repressed, it seems somewhat inevitable that resentful classmates take to terrorizing
   her -- threatening gross punishments (assault, even rape) for her alleged aloofness or visible self-regard; bringing her to fear she may not even make it to graduation before she is annihilated. Her descriptions of the high school sociopaths who lurk in the shadows, of the horrifying notes slipped anonymously into her locker, will ring true for everyone who has ever been bullied in school -- for every woman or girl who has dared not to apologize for intellectual excellence or
   outstanding achievment.
   
   In fact, though she doesn't say so explicitly,
   the creepy two-bit persecution Ansay recounts from her high school years is probably good preparation for her later encounters with adult-aged creeps and insensates -- with the whole gallery of unthinking, gaping, sometimes reproving or sermonizing strangers who tend to assail a visibly disabled person wherever she goes, intruding on her privacy and dignity with their endless repertoire of bizarre questions and surreal remarks.
   
   By the time Ansay reaches her twenties -- an
   expatriate Catholic with severe new medical limitations,
   reconciling herself to assistive devices such as wheel
   chairs and power scooters -- she seems eminently well
   equipped to deal with such individuals. She dispatches
   them with a wonderful, dry, ironic sense of humor that
   had me laughing and reading passages out loud to those
   few people in my own life who might understand. The
   smarmy, patronizing salesman; the man in the cultish
   pain management program whose hand she would rather
   not be holding during Twelve-Step-esque vespers; the
   intrusive evangelist who speaks to her of throwing away her wheel chair -- all are fair game for Ansay's droll, subtle, devastating wit.
   
   This memoir properly belongs to the genre of
   such outstanding works as Nancy Mairs's *Waist-High in
   the World,* Oliver Sacks's *A Leg to Stand On,* and
   the wonderful New Yorker piece by Laura Hillenbrand
   (author of *Seabiscuit*), "A Sudden Illness -- How My
   Life Changed.* It might be read especially
   appropriately as a complement to the fine expository
   volume and research study *When Walking Fails* by Lisa
   Iezzoni, a distinguished Harvard health researcher and
   veteran of MS.
   
   All refugees -- abyss-leapers, entrants into the
   wilderness -- must typically limit their luggage
   severely, settling on a few spare, precious remnants
   they will transport into that whole new country.
   
   This spare, poetic, insightful memoir --
   marked up in black ballpoint and yellow highlighter,
   extruding additional notes and comments on multiple
   rainbow-Post-Its -- elegantly truthful, no matter how
   hard the truths -- calmly, sometimes delightfully companionable in its recounting of familiar interpersonal misunderstandings at once horrific and hilarious -- is definitely one of my own essentials, to be tucked into my specially lightweight backpack or that small, handy storage space just under the seat of my walker.
   
   Elizabeth Rasche Gonzalez
   Medical/Legal Writing & Editorial Services
   Chicago, Illinois
   Email: poetryperson@sbcglobal.net
   
   The author is a longtime medical writer and midlife law graduate (admitted to the bar in 1994). Since 1997, she has been disabled by defective spinal hardware, surgically implanted to correct scoliosis. In the past five years, she has undergone six additional spinal revision surgeries. Elizabeth owns and manages a 488-member forum for other adults with scoliosis who are coping with ongoing problems arising from Harrington rod instrumentation: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FeistyScolioFlatbackers



3. In "Limbo," a memoir by A. Manette Ansay, the author remembers growing up in the sixties and seventies, for the most part, with fondness. Although Ann's traditional Catholic upbringing gave her nightmares on more than one occasion, the strict rules and routines that governed her life made her feel secure. When her parents took her to Wisconsin, she got to know her large extended family, which included sixty-seven cousins. As a youngster, Ann enjoyed physical activity of any sort. She loved to run, jump, and wrestle, and she even did sit-ups and push-ups when she was in elementary school.
   
   One of the great loves of Ann's life was music. She took piano lessons for years and practiced for hours each day. She became so proficient that she was eventually admitted to the prestigious Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. Tragically, her promising musical career was cut short when physical symptoms that she had been battling for years suddenly grew worse. She suffered from intense pain in her arms and legs, and the doctors she consulted could not agree on a diagnosis. She tried cortisone shots, anti-inflammatory drugs, splints, braces, surgery, hypnosis, and many other treatments. Nothing cured her, although there were times when she could walk under her own power for short distances. However, because of the pain in her arms, Ann knew that she had to give up her dream of becoming a concert pianist. After much soul searching, she eventually turned to writing.
   
   "Limbo" is an episodic memoir that goes back and forth in time. The shifts are sometimes too sudden and they give the book a choppy feel. In addition, it is a bit confusing when Ansay uses the present tense to describe events long past. However, her descriptive writing is vivid, lyrical, and evocative. She uses creative imagery to depict the people she has known and the experiences that have shaped her life. The author includes in her memoir engrossing anecdotes about a wide variety of topics, including her troubled Grandmother Ansay, the way that Chaim Potok's novel, "The Chosen" changed her view of the world, her ambivalence about religion, and her childhood worries and escapades.
   
   The book is most affecting when Ann talks about her illness and how it transformed her. She attended and completed college, even though she was unable to take notes or written exams. Strangers stared and pointed at her in her wheelchair or made rude comments about her disability, such as, "You've got it easy--the rest of us have to walk." However, the illness brought Ann closer to her parents, especially her mother, who was an invaluable asset to her sick daughter. In 1986, Ann's mother took her on a seven-hour drive to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota every six weeks for treatments.
   
   Today, Ansay is a successful writer, and she has come to terms with her condition. She says, "It's a good life, made up of the people I love, the novels I've written and those I plan to write . . . ." Her persistence, determination, and resilience are inspiring, and I recommend "Limbo" for those who are interested in a true story of courage and grace under pressure.



4. There are those who easily turn to their religion to find comfort in the midst of nearly any difficulty. Then there are those who REFUSE to do so and who are able to find their way through the pain anyway.
   Ansay falls into the latter group (and I want to be clear here,...I'm not saying one viewpoint is better than the other, only pointing out the facts).
   She is quite honest about her unwillingness (or inability) to make that choice for herself. She is faced with a mysterious illness and no guarantee of recovery. She may be in a wheelchair all her life. She is young.
   THe result? A book about how she comes to grips with all of this WITHOUT insisting on finding "meaning" or a sense that she was destined for this or that there is some deeper significance or spiritual pattern in her illness.
   If you know someone in a similar circumstance, someone for whom religion is not an easy comfort and who wonders how others have coped, this would be a perfect choice. It is also worth reading by just about anyone who wonders "What if?" or "How would I handle this?". Honest, detailed and unflinching.



5. and I put down after only a few pages before. This time I started it I read the whole thing. The last part of the book had the deepest meeting for me. I am glad I gave it another chance. I have read her fictional story called "Sister" some time ago so I was familiar with the author. I also read the book "Read this and tell me what it means" another book by the author that book is a short story collection. I am glad I gave this book another chance. :)

No comments about La Dame d'Esprit: A Biography of Marquise Du Chatelet.

2 comments about Dream Big: The Henrietta Mears Story.

1. The Henrietta Mears story is very inspiring. This is a wonderful book for anyone to read who is interested in being an impacting Christian leader. Women, if you are looking for an awesome role model for leadership, look no farther. I am a male, and this is one of the best books Ive ever read. Tells an awesome story about an amazing women.



2. Just finished this. It's wonderful to read about this godly woman who directly impacted so many women and men--many of who served all over the world as a result of her ministry. An incredible example of leadership, of staying relavant, remaining humble, always pursuing God... Do keep in mind, however, that her wonderful sister took care of all external (household) responsibilities so that Henrietta would be free to follow God's leading in her life. (That's for all of you women who might feel a little guilty after reading it :)) Either way, this book will challenge and inspire both men and women. Highly recommend.

5 comments about Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok.

1. Eleanor Roosevelt has been an inspiration ever since I was a young girl, a terrific role model for political activists, humanitarians, and women and girls of all ages. But she is often portrayed in biographies (excepting Blanche Wiesen Cook's wonderful recent work) as a cold fish in her personal life. This is one of the reasons that any fan of ER should read these letters. ER is passionate, caring, needy, annoyed - real emotions from a real woman. We also get a look at Lorena Hickok - Hick - beyond the stereotypes, as a woman deeply in love and troubled by the lack of an exclusive relationship.

   One problem I have with the book, though, is not letting whole letters speak for themselves, revealing more of the political discussions that seem to have been a big part of both women's lives and their attraction to one another. Were they lovers? They were certainly "in love," and regardless of where they drew the physical line, this book reveals foremothers any woman, lesbians included, should be proud to claim.




2. As an avid reader of all things Roosevelt, I was rather disappointed in Rodger Streitmatter's Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. The story of how Eleanor and Lorena (Hick) became such intimate friends (maybe even physically intimate) is a fascinating one. Hick was a hard-nosed AP reporter who had a successful 20 year career in a profession dominated almost exclusively by men. In the course of covering FDR's first campaign, she found a kindred spirit in Eleanor. Both women were needy: they both had tough childhoods, suffered humiliations and tragedies, and were deeply wounded by those they loved. They struck up a lifelong friendship, although the intensity of this relationship waned after the first 3 years. During the course of this friendship, they wrote each other almost every day, and sometimes more than one letter in a day. Hick also lived at the White House for some of this time.

   What I found so disappointing about Empty Without You is that out of the many thousands of letters that Eleanor and Hick exchanged throughout their lifetime, Hick destroyed a good many of them-especially those letters from the beginning of their relationship when it was the most intense. There are not many surprises here, and those few that allow a peak at their level of intimacy have been extensively quoted in other Roosevelt books. Also, I found that the story itself is rather depressing. Hick gave Eleanor the knowledge and power to recast the job of First Lady so that Eleanor could better achieve her own political agenda. She encouraged Eleanor to give weekly news conferences with only women reporters invited. She also prodded Eleanor to start writing newspaper columns-monthly at first, and then her daily My Day column that ran for 27 years. Finally, Hick suggested that Eleanor write her autobiography before FDR's first term was even finished. At first, Eleanor depended on Hick to help her with her writing. But Eleanor was a quick study and soon no longer needed Hick. Unfortunately, in broadening her horizons, Eleanor had less and less time for Hick. To make matters worse, Hick was forced to give up her newspaper job because of conflicts of interest, and took on a job traveling the country on behalf of FERA to report on the progress of relief programs. Hick missed the career that had brought her great success, name recognition, positive reinforcement and financial security. Hick also suffered from depression and mood swings-especially when her time with Eleanor did not go as planned. Unfortunately for Hick, her ugly and frequent outbursts were an embarrassment to Eleanor and had just the opposite effect: instead of bringing them even closer, Eleanor started to pull away. Still, Eleanor never completely abandoned Hick and did much to take care of her (especially financially) as they aged.

   One thing that I did enjoy about Empty Without You are the reports that Hick wrote for FERA. Although she mostly gave snippets of these in her letters to Eleanor, boss Harry Hopkins was correct when he predicted that Hick's well-written reports would in the future become a window on the Great Depression. But overall, there is not much new or enlightening in this book. If you want to know more about the relationship between Eleanor and Lorena, I'd stick with Doris Faber's Life of Lorena Hickok: E.R.'s Friend.




3. If you read the letters and not the "explanations" of Streitmatter, you know that this was a classic love affair of the first order. Passionate, intense, full of high levels of emotion, intermixed with politics and social issues of the day. For anyone to read these letters and deny that these women enjoyed each others bodies as much as their minds is really outside the realm of human experience. The question of course that remains is the unequivocal statement by both John Kerrey and John Edwards in the debates in 2004 when they proclaimed that you are "born" a lesbian as they tried to make political points with the sexual orientation of Dick Cheney's daughter. Did Eleanor have a lesbian relationship with "Hick?" Most certainly. Was she born that way and have a "traditional" marriage with many kids fathered by FDR just as a cover? I doubt it, but who knows; which was Bush's much more honest answer in response to the "lesbian" question.
   Was FDR a liar of the first order? He ran in 1940 for the unprecedented third term on the basis of never "sending American men to fight foreign wars" while planning to do so at the same time. Someone so deceitful was most certainly well practiced in the art while having affairs with women at the same time Eleanor was bearing his children. Did she turn to other women for the love that FDR failed to give her, or did he turn to other women because she was really "born" a lesbian. We will probably never know the truth of their relationship, but the letters between Eleanor and "Hick" are pure honest love. The only reason I don't give this book five stars is that the author gets in the way of the story.



4. This well-edited book definitely preserves the intimacy of the relationship between ER and Hick. Regardless of your personal interpretation of their relationship, the book makes for fascinating reading. There are many "behind the scenes" details of the workings of the New Deal and other social and political events of the time. This book is nothing less than fascinating.



5. A woman I knew so little about comes to life in this book. I generally don't like biographies or autobiographies but this one is the exception!! Order from Amazon to get it quick!!

No comments about Waheenee: An Indian Girl's Story.

4 comments about Diana: The Intimate Portrait.

1. I read this book and I feel it is time all the fluff and nonsense about this woman is put to rest. I did not buy it but was given it as a gift. Yes, she died too young, but she LOVED the attention she got from the press. Her and Dodi knew the press would follow them that night and should have stayed in the Ritz. If she was pregnant as some claim, I would be willing to bet the father was Dr. Hasnat Khan who refused to make their relationship permanent - so poor Dodi Fayed came in mighty handy - same dark skin, etc. This woman also had many affairs during her marriage, and I believe Prince Charles that he only went back to Camilla when he realized the demon Diana really was. I never heard a word about the Prince dating other women whilst still married to her, until he went back to Camilla.
   She caused much hurt and pain in several marriages. As far as doing so good, she played the press like a fine violin, and her deep concern for the poor is really touching. However, she did not leave one single penny of her own money to the poor. Someone in England who has some ties to people with info told me the reason the marriage went bad after the birth of Harry was that Diana expected the Queen to retire from the throne, secure in the three male heirs, and the Queen let her know that would never happen - hence the hysteria. Sorry, there was a tarnished image of this woman and it is time everyone try to stop moaning over her. I have heard people of the telly ask what Camilla had that Diana did not - THE DEEP LOVE AND RESPECT OF THE PRINCE. Remember, she was raised with close family ties to the Royal Family and knew what was involved. I hope she rests in peace.



2. This is an enjoyable, light fluffy read on her life. I did not really learn anything new about Diana...and it was nice to revisit Diana...in the moment...through the stories with people who knew her right before she died.



3. I don't agree with Deidre's opinion. This book is wonderful.
   I can't imagine why "Deidre" is so bitter person and said a lot of nonsense about Diana.
   Diana was unhappy with Prince Charles and she deserved to be happy.
   No matter if she had many affairs. The most important at all is that she had helped too many people all around the world and she made the difference for them. She sold many of her dresses to help people with AIDS,she had raised a lot of money to people in need.
   Princess Diana made what many people have never done before.
   "Deidre" opion about Diana don't have to be take into consideration.
   It's really sad to know that there's people like "Deidre" in this world.
   "Deidre" should have keep what she thinks about Diana to herself.



4. Poor, disillusioned Dierdre. The Princess was flawed and lived her life with inconsistencies. So do we all. To condemn Diana for having affairs while touting the love that Charles has for Camilla reeks of hypocrisy. Now, on to the book: If you are a Diana fan, you will learn nothing new from this latest attempt to cash in on Diana's sad life & untimely death. Expect a breezy trip through much-traveled territory, and you will not be disappointed. Oh, and Diedrre, one last thing: The Princess can never rest in peace as long as people such as you insist on casting aspersions and repeating vile rumors spread by Charles' sycophants (look it up in the dictionary).

No comments about Diario de Santa Maria Faustina Kowalska.

5 comments about Star Woman: We Are Made from Stars and to the Stars We Must Return.

1. This powerful book is part of a new genre that has been forming since the emergence of Carlos Castaneda's writings in the late 1960s and early 70s--you could call the genre "spiritual memoir." Readers who are inclined to see the world literally and who believe that there is nothing more to reality than what appears on its surface might not find these books useful. But if you wish to suspend your disbelief and skepticism, these works can prove invaluable.

   Authors such as Lynn Andrews are teachers, and sometimes the content of their books is challenging. Whether you accept it as fact or dismiss it as fiction, Star Woman is beautifully written, suspense-filled, dramatic, and full of lessons.




2. Do you dare to believe that this "story" is true? We , the readers are told to dare to believe, yet it is well known that the author is writing a fictive memoir, a story full of metaphor for a culture that no longer dares to believe the imaginal realms are true. The problem is if the author is actually experiencing it on the imaginal plane, but dares to say it is as real as you reading this then how can we be any more confused as a seeker, looking for something to believe in. Call it for what it is, we do not need to have teachers leading us down anymore darkened roads, we need teachers that dare to say the imaginal is as real as anything and therefore hold that up as a guiding light. Tell the Truth.



3. I tend to rate books on how they talk to me. And this one sure did. Just like Ms. Andrews' other books this book has the potential to change your life, if you are ready to understand the messages behind the story. It sure had quite an impact on mine. She speaks in poetic and imaginative language about fears we have difficulty facing and yet in this lyrical description I find the color and beauty to take responsibility to face those fears. How much better can a book get.



4. I read this book many years ago when it was first published and just reread it. I am amazed at how much it mirrors teachings from people like Almaas, Tolle, and Wilbur. Years ago, I was taken by the feminist and indigenous perspective. Today, I am appreciative of the human truth I find in it. I like the story format, and whether it is literally or figuratively true, I found that the story added to the telling. I am now rereading all of Andrews' books. As I've grown, her words are touching a different place.



5. Another of Lynns fantastic stories of her shamanistic travels, and her involvement with the sisterhood of the shields. Love it.

3 comments about Eudora Welty: A Writer's Life.

1. This is a terrible, mean-spirited attack against our greatest living writer, attacking her looks, her private life, etc. Eudora Welty has said throughout her life that she didn't want a biography written about her. This woman obviously does not respect her or she would respect her wishes. And why do such a book at this late date, with Miss Welty about to turn 90?? The author coyly pretends to be an admirer and then makes endless lurid allusions to a lady who basically has devoted her whole life to cultivating her art. Our most gifted writer is dismissed as a homely, unwanted "fag hag." (Judging by the photo of the dust jacket, Miss Waldron is no Hedy Lamarr herself). What would Edna Earle say about such a woman!! Don't buy this garbage. Buy another copy of one of Miss Eudora's books instead. You'll love it and it won't upset your stomach. To think some poor trees had to be slaughtered for this trash!! By the way, Happy 90th Birthday to Miss Eudora Welty who will certainly survive such a infantile attack as this. And someday an HONORABLE biography about her no will doubt be written.



2. I spent most of the weekend immersed in this book--and becoming enchanted with Eudora Welty. Monday I was at the library getting several of her works. I wanted to start at the beginning, so I read her first short story--Death of a Traveling Salesman. It was as gripping and powerful as I had hoped. This biography is respectful and insightful. It provides you with a strong sense of a gentle, talented southern lady who was absolutely true to herself and the world in which she spent her life and nurtured her talents. I am looking forward to reading everything Eudora Welty wrote and getting to know her. And it all began with this biography.



3. Interpretations of books may differ, but most readers agree that an author's lot in life is to unlock diaries, tell secrets, and share the intimate thoughts of their characters. But when it comes to sharing their lives, some authors are more willing to bare their pasts and share their inspiration than others. Eudora Welty did not embrace the notion of her life populating pages of a biography, yet Ann Waldron portrays the author in EUDORA: A Writer's Life in a way that will surely prompt a renewed interest in her works.

   Waldron employs a stark style of writing that is at times dry, listing dates and events with little commentary, but her simplicity allows the richness of her content to shine. A book that promises to enthrall readers whose literary interests have led to Welty's novels, EUDORA: A Writer's Life will undoubtedly serve as a useful reference.

   Those whose interest in Welty precedes her novels should be prepared for a sneak peek into the author's development of characters and the personal experiences that may have molded them in her mind. Using quotes from interviews and snippets from correspondence, Waldron is able to project Welty's voice in a way that allows readers to hear Welty as though she were in the same room. Writers will especially appreciate one quote from Welty, in which she explains the way she discovered one character's role in several short stories. "All I had to do was put two and two together, him and my little group, and I had him by the tail," she said.

   While Waldron shares some of Welty's inner thoughts, as documented in letters and such, she does not presume to analyze the meaning behind Welty's stories or the motivation of her characters, a practice that Welty openly disparaged. In one chapter, Welty comments on letters she received from readers wanting to know whether a character's choice of an apple in "A Visit of Charity" is a reference to the Garden of Eden. Welty, whose impatience resonates in her quote said of the question, "The things some people teach! She was just eating that [an apple] the way you would a Hershey bar --- or anything else you'd saved for a reward after an ordeal. I used to visit the old ladies. They scared me. I couldn't wait to leave."

   This quote and others help to draw a picture of Welty, often called "Eudo" by family and friends and loved unilaterally by colleagues, friends, family, and audiences around the world. She was not, however, a woman who enjoyed the social life of the times. Her looks are described by some as ugly, off-putting, and odd; but such descriptions are always followed by praise of her character, her zest for life, and her talent as a writer. Welty's looks may have prevented a slightly less creative girl from achieving similar heights, but she seemed to channel both the negative and the positives of her life into her work. She was able to transcend the superficiality of the times, which put a staggering amount of importance on looks, and is remembered by colleagues as a woman before her time.

   The book, which spans 340 pages, also delves into the network of literary giants that Welty cultivated. From her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi to New York City and abroad Welty toured, spoke, and nurtured a growing base of loyal friends and fans. She was called approachable by students who attended her lectures and lovable by friends who shared intimate moments and memories with her. Well respected and revered by writers, editors, and publishers, Welty was a multifaceted woman who first tested creative waters as a photographer who was known to walk into less fortunate neighborhoods and take pictures of people from all walks of life.

   Welty identified her dream to be a writer in the early 20s and her determination led her from the society pages of a daily Mississippi newspaper to becoming junior publicist for the Works Progress Administration; and, later, a novelist whose life is of interest to readers around the world.

   After reading about her life, I find myself recalling characters that at one point or another find themselves in similar circumstances or places that Eudora experienced, and have already put her autobiography titled ONE WRITER'S BEGINNINGS on my literary wish list.

   --- Reviewed by Heather Grimshaw

3 comments about Notes from Nethers: Growing Up In A Sixties Commune.

1. Sandra Eugster tells a compelling story about her experiences growing up on a sixties commune. She is thrust into an adult life-style without the background and skills to cope with it, and certainly not by choice. The book gives a rich and detailed picture of life on a hippy commune. For those of us who lived during the same times in a more conventional way, it paints a colorful canvas of an alternative way of life. The author's relationship with the other members of the commune, her mother, and sisters involves the reader emotionally and keeps one wondering what could possibly happen next.
   I highly recommend Notes from Nethers: Growing Up In A Sixties Communeas an informative and entertaining real life memoir.



2. Notes from Nethers: Growing Up in a Sixties Commune is the true-life memoir of author Sandra Eugster, largely centering around her adolescence in a commune in rural Virginia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The commune Nethers, started by Eugster's mother Carla, was meant to promote social change and grounded in the counterculture of the era. Immersed in the culture shock of commune life at the tender age of nine, Eugster had to adjust along with her older sisters to the complexities of commune life, weekly consensus meetings, days of silence, sweat-hut rituals, and more. Yet even more challenging was making the re-adjustment to the outside world after the commune dissolved - studying for SATs (given that her own education ended at third grade), and gradually learning social skills that she'd never had the opportunity to cultivate amid years of isolation from "normal" people her own age. "The wish to return to innocence came with the thought that by removing the barriers between adult and child, the children could be the bridge back to innocence. But the force of nature goes the other direction, and many children lost their innocence devastatingly early. I often think I was fortunate not to have been molested. But in a sense I was. My exposure to sexual matters was premature, as was my close contact with extreme human peculiarities and, ultimately, the harsh reality of adults doing what was right for themselves as opposed to their charges." Highly recommended as a matter-of-fact glimpse into what commune life was truly like: the good, the bad and the ugly.



3. Highly recommended. The book relates the difficulties and even traumas that the youngest member of a family had to face after being uprooted from a comfortable suburban life and thrust into her mother's "dream" society. The author portrays the other residents of the commune (even ones that might seem less than honorable in terms of honesty and work ethic) with sensitivity and understanding. What is especially interesting is the fact that many of the incidents related could be from the present. A group of the residents went to a three day workshop and came back with a "Secret" that they would share with no one. And meditating upon the secret had to be done under a blanket if a "non-initiate" were near-by. Her short-lived experience at the local elementary school was especially sad. A black teacher effectively ostracizing a Jewish student (Sandra) and white boys making black students leave the sidewalk as they came by could happen today in more subtle ways. Abject poverty in surrounding hills in rural Virginia was also heartbreakingly described. The reader is left to decide for himself or herself about the long term effects and/or fairness of Carla (mother) taking her three daughters and starting this commune at the foot of a mountain; especially the effect on the youngest member (the author) who had to spend her formative years without companions near her in age.