Where is your nonfiction section please.
Book review: Borrowed Finery, by Paula Fox (Amazon / Book Depository) For years I assumed responsibility for all that happened in my life, even for events over which I had not the slightest control. It was not out of generosity of mind or spirit that I did so. It was a hopeless wish that I... Continue Reading →
Review: The Yellow House, by Sarah M. Broom (Amazon / Book Depository) Nothing had, at the moment I asked, been written about the lives of the people who lived there. The East was not too young for history; it was just that in the official story of New Orleans, its stories and people were relegated... Continue Reading →
Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family, by Louise DeSalvo In our house, no one ever went with the flow. There was no flow. There were only dangerous rapids, huge whirlpools, gigantic waterfalls. In our house, you had to be wary, vigilant. To stop paying attention, even for a... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Wrong End of the Table, by Ayser Salman (Amazon / Book Depository) If you've ever felt like you've been at the wrong end of the table - whether you were born in an Iraqi dictatorship or hail from Lexington, Kentucky - this is for you. Though I can't speak for all of... Continue Reading →
Book review: Survival Math, by Mitchell S. Jackson (Amazon / Book Depository) Sirens scream (for who else in the world but you?) in the distance. In a prose style unlike any I've encountered before, Mitchell S. Jackson, novelist and writing instructor at New York and Columbia Universities, writes a memoir of his life and tumultuous... Continue Reading →
Book review: All the Wild Hungers by Karen Babine (Amazon / Book Depository) Cancer divides - as its very premise, its cells divide, maniacally, so that one rogue cell becomes two becomes a three-pound cabbage-sized tumor. Yet the same is happening inside my sister in a different way, as her child who was once one cell became... Continue Reading →
Book review: Kitchen Yarns, by Ann Hood (Amazon / Book Depository) When I write an essay about food, I am really uncovering something deeper in my life - loss, family, confusion, growing up, growing away from what I knew, returning, grief, joy, and, yes, love. Author Ann Hood is also a Laurie Colwin devotee, and... Continue Reading →
Book review: On Sunset, by Kathryn Harrison (Amazon Book Depository) Never mind that we live in Los Angeles and that I was born in 1961; my childhood belongs to my mother's parents, who, in the way of old people, have returned themselves to their pasts, taking me along. Author Kathryn Harrison writes a memoir of... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Adversary, by Emmanuel Carrere Book Depository It should have been warm and cozy, that family life. They thought it was warm and cozy. But he knew that it was rotten at the core, that not one moment, not one gesture, not even their slumbers had escaped this rot that had grown within him,... Continue Reading →
Book review: Heartland, by Sarah Smarsh Journalist Sarah Smarsh is a fifth generation Kansan who grew up with her family life centered around a wheat farm in the countryside, with Wichita being the closest big city. In her memoir, she chronicles generations of her family, particularly the strong but troubled women in her lineage, and puts... Continue Reading →
Book review: True Crimes, by Kathryn Harrison Amazon I see the bravado required to be funny and beguiling when what you really are is old and aching and breathless from congestive heart failure, when what you really are is afraid. Kathryn Harrison is such a tricky author. A writer of quietly powerful, serious talents, her... Continue Reading →
Book review: Calypso, by David Sedaris Amazon His most recent publications have been a bit of a diversion for David Sedaris. Last year, he published the first part of his diaries, Theft by Finding, which showed the genesis of some of his well known works, as well as being an unconventional glimpse into his early life and... Continue Reading →
What's Nonfiction? 