I guess I should’ve expected how close to home this would hit: the subtitle sums it up. It revolves around the oral histories of women who were sent to homes for unwed mothers in the 1940s-1960s, their nearly-always coerced adoptions, their lives after surrendering, their reunions if they ever occurred. I am part of a birth family: my mother relinquished my two younger siblings for adoption, and it defined my childhood. Adoption is such a sore nerve, I almost never read about it. Besides which, […]
In which I take another step toward beatific acceptance of my plebian taste
This probably qualifies as another lit-fic fail for me, by which I don’t mean that the book was a failure; I mostly likely just failed to appreciate it. It’s one of those oniony books that has a lot of layers, and characters who relate to each other on levels both appropriate and otherwise. Set in the 1960’s, there’s a story of a young woman who finds out she is of European Jewish descent, and finds herself digging into her history by way of trying to […]
A kookie little romance
This was a selection for the May nonfiction book club, and it lost. I’m so disappointed, you guys. But, I will persevere. Wasson recounts the history behind both Truman Capote’s 1958 novel, and the 1961 film directed by Blake Edwards and starring the inimitable and unconquerable Audrey Hepburn. Overall, this is a pretty good snapshot of Truman Capote, Audrey Hepburn, the film industry of the late 50s and early 60s, and the shifting beauty standards of the era. All of which amounts to a pretty […]
It’s all about the girls
On the surface, The Girls, by Emma Cline, appears to be about a Manson-like figure in Northern California in the 1960s. The leader of a small, communal living group, Russell taught his small group of followers “to discover a path to truth, how to free their real selves from where it was coiled inside them.” The group consists mostly of women, and mostly of young women, who felt that being around Russell was “like a natural high… Like the sun or something. That big and […]
When the night has come
This, perhaps the most quintessential “Stephen King story” ever written, walks that delicate, liminal space between childhood and adolescence. Here lies the age when perfection exists unrecognized. When you have the friends you’ll always carry with you, regardless of later circumstance. This is the age when childhood has reached its apogee: immediately before the confusion of puberty and the discovery of girls. It is a time for unchecked vulgarity, false bravado and posturing, and the constant interplay and co-mingling of imagination and experience, where the […]
Nicholson Flew Over the Place Where Birds Roost
I make a “not bucket list” every year of things I’d like to do in the upcoming year and read/watch “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” made the cut, so it was the perfect thing to tackle during a mini Spring Break-staycation. Randle Patrick McMurphy is a gambling con-man in the 196os who trades a stint on a prison work farm for a stay in an asylum. The men’s only asylum has a rich cast of characters who are battling their own personal demons, but […]
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