My life and work have been profoundly affected by the central circumstance of my existence: I was born into a very large military Catholic family in the United States of America. As a child surrounded by many others in the 60s, I wrote, performed, and directed family plays with my numerous brothers and sisters. Although I fell in love with a Canadian and moved to Canada, my family of origin still exerts considerable personal influence. My central struggle, coming from that place of chaos, order, and conformity, is to have the courage to live an authentic life based on my own experience of connectedness and individuality, to speak and be heard.
Frank McCourt's classic book, the memoir of his childhood, is proof in the pudding that the origin of humor is the suffering of the low-status character. And that’s only one reason why I love it.
He had me at “Above all -- we were wet.” His descriptions of the impossible and undignified conditions of his childhood, where children had absolutely no control over anything and adults were at the mercy of life itself, brought me so close to him that I think I started believing we were actually related and scribbled him into the family tree as a long-lost uncle.
McCourt captures the hapless quality of gullible, unsupervised children let loose on an unforgiving world with a buoyancy that comes through every sentence and rises above the brutal conditions of his childhood.
And the truth he finds in the details, from the brutality of religious authority figures to the abject desperation of unrelenting hunger and cold to the humiliation of having no agency whatsoever in the face of his own humanity, this is a masterpiece of survival and forgiveness.
The author recounts his childhood in Depression-era Brooklyn as the child of Irish immigrants who decide to return to worse poverty in Ireland when his infant sister dies.
A novel with a disarming protagonist who notices small flowers in dirty rugs, peeling wallpaper, and snow-covered sidewalks. Baby (her ‘ironic’ name) observes her marginal existence with her single twenty-something-drug-addicted Dad in Montreal’s red light district with wisdom and optimism.
I loved her voice, her resilience, and the innocence of her character. Accessible and fun to read, I became aware that Baby’s simple observations were exquisitely detailed and had the effect of lifting the prose to a level of insightfulness without being showy.
As a reader, I immediately relaxed in the presence of this charming teen/narrator and her sometimes scary adventures. As a writer, I became addicted. She deals with themes of being human, vulnerable, and yet empathetic. The narrative is fun and suspenseful to read (my level of suspense, ha ha) Also funny! Again, a low-status character who, through her struggles with the day-to-day challenges of being alive, is beguiling, unselfconscious, and lovable.
An absolute gem of a book. So much so that I re-read it for inspiration whenever beginning a writing project; her lightweight, detailed witness makes me try harder with every sentence of my own writing.
Baby is twelve years old. Her mother died not long after she was born and she lives in a string of seedy flats in Montreal's red light district with her father Jules, who takes better care of his heroin addiction than he does of his daughter. Jules is an intermittent presence and a constant source of chaos in Baby's life - the turmoil he brings with him and the wreckage he leaves in his wake. Baby finds herself constantly re-adjusting to new situations, new foster homes, new places, new people, all the while longing for stability and a 'normal' life.…
Saul Indian Horse narrates this heartbreaking, rich story about a youth who is a prisoner in a government-sanctioned boarding school, surrounded by violence and cruelty, and yet speaks in a resilient and courageous voice as he struggles to find salvation from the destruction of his family.
I love it because Saul’s voice to tell his story brings me, the reader, so close to him in empathy that I feel him in my heart. In the midst of his daily reality in a horrific boarding school, Saul is surrounded by institutional and personal cruelty. At the urging of a priest, he finds tentative salvation in hockey, where he proves himself undeniably gifted.
His intuition, speed, hard work, and determination are remarkable against the indignities, taunts, racism, and hatred he encounters in the ruling white world. The voice of this protagonist is so authentic, so moving, and so spare, and yet the sum total of this coming-of-age story sparkles like a jewel. Highly recommended.
Named a "Best Novel of the Decade" by Literary Hub
Saul Indian Horse is a child when his family retreats into the woods. Among the lakes and the cedars, they attempt to reconnect with half-forgotten traditions and hide from the authorities who have been kidnapping Ojibway youth. But when winter approaches, Saul loses everything: his brother, his parents, his beloved grandmother—and then his home itself.
Alone in the world and placed in a horrific boarding school, Saul is surrounded by violence and cruelty. At the urging of a priest, he finds a tentative salvation in hockey. Rising at dawn to…
The fact that this book is a memoir makes it more amazing than a work of fiction.
The writer, Jeannette Walls, has so much more at stake in this story because it’s about her family, her childhood, and her parents. Her life. I raced through the book, from the first page, with my mouth open in almost disbelief because the level of neglect that Jeannette’s parents floated around in was astounding.
The story of childhood should not be so suspenseful, but Jeannette tells her realities so casually; her experience was truly like a frog in a pot of warming water, so familiar to the narrator as to be almost unremarkable but so dangerous. The appalling nature of the stories and fables told to her by her parents, in relief, made me question my own family narrative. And then there’s the question of the choices her parents deliberately made.
I’m recommending it here because the voice was pitch-perfect and included Wall’s love for her parents as well as bald observation. In spite of the events she witnessed, Wall held me, her reader, in a safe space to be able to explore the complexities of a childhood steeped in neglect. Another classic.
Now a major motion picture starring Brie Larson, Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson.
This is a startling memoir of a successful journalist's journey from the deserted and dusty mining towns of the American Southwest, to an antique filled apartment on Park Avenue. Jeanette Walls narrates her nomadic and adventurous childhood with her dreaming, 'brilliant' but alcoholic parents.
At the age of seventeen she escapes on a Greyhound bus to New York with her older sister; her younger siblings follow later. After pursuing the education and civilisation her parents sought to escape, Jeanette eventually succeeds in her quest for the 'mundane,…
This book is a coming-of-age story of tradition and redemption about a feisty adolescent desperate to be noticed in an enormous Catholic family.
It’s 1963. When a family friend is short-listed to become the first American pope, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies to get some attention and bolster the status of herself and her family as exemplary Christians. But when she discovers closely held family secrets, when ‘The Hands’ visits her in bed, and when her sister faces a scandal, Annie begins to realize her parents will do almost anything to maintain their reputation. Questioning all she has been taught and torn between her own gut instinct and years of Catholic guilt, Annie takes courageous risks to wrest salvation from her parents’ betrayal.
Kelly Simmons has been published in 12 countries by Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks, and her widely praised novels are frequently compared to Big Little Lies.
Her new book, The Off Season, is set on the tranquil shores of the Chesapeake Bay, where headstrong thirteen-year-old Savannah bursts into the local police department, insisting her mother’s drowning was anything but an accident. She’s forced to tangle with the languid Bay police department as well as the year-rounder adults and teens who might be complicit not just in her mother’s death but a decades-old cold case.
For fans of Lisa Jewell and Liane Moriarty. Published in 12 countries by Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks, Kelly's widely praised novels are frequently compared to BIG LITTLE LIES.
THE OFF SEASON explodes on the tranquil shores of the Chesapeake Bay. A headstrong thirteen-year-old girl insists her mother’s drowning was anything but an accident. She’s forced to tangle with the languid bay police department as well as the year-rounder adults and teens who might be complicit not just in her mother’s death, but a decades-old cold case. With echoes of GONE GIRL and STAND BY ME, it’s part crime, part…
