All Souls
Rating: ★★★★★ All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, by Michael Patrick MacDonald. Ballantine Books (1999), 265 pages. The six kids on the cover of this book (the photo wraps around to the back) are...
View ArticleA Charmed Life
Rating: ★★★☆☆ A Charmed Life: Growing Up in Macbeth’s Castle, by Liza Campbell. Thomas Dunne Books (2006), 324 pages. Cawdor Castle is fifteen miles east of Inverness, Scotland, an area with countless...
View ArticleThis Boy’s Life
Rating: ★★★★★ This Boy’s Life: A Memoir, by Tobias Wolff. Grove Press (2000), 304 pages. In This Boy’s Life, Wolff writes about growing up in the 1950s, moving from state to state with his mother as...
View ArticleTurning Stones
Rating: ★★★☆☆ Turning Stones: My Days and Nights With Children at Risk, by Marc Parent. Ballantine Books (1998), 400 pages. This is the memoir of a caseworker for Emergency Children’s Services in New...
View ArticleHouse of Happy Endings
Rating: ★★★★☆ House of Happy Endings, by Leslie Garis. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2008), 360 pages. The title of this memoir refers to Garis’s grandfather’s stories for children (Uncle Wiggily, as well...
View ArticleLet’s Take the Long Way Home
Rating: ★★★☆☆ Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship, by Gail Caldwell. Random House (2010), 190 pages. Let’s Take the Long Way Home is Caldwell’s story of her friendship with the writer...
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Coming of Age in Mississippi
Rating: ★★☆☆☆ Coming of Age in Mississippi, by Anne Moody. Random House (1968), 432 pages. I saw this for sale in the textbook section of a university bookstore and bought it because (apart from the...
View ArticleBlood, Bones & Butter
Rating: ★★★★☆ Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, by Gabrielle Hamilton. Random House (2011), 291 pages. Hamilton has written a smart, funny book that stands out...
View ArticleA Widow’s Story
Rating: ★★★★☆ A Widow’s Story: A Memoir, by Joyce Carol Oates. Ecco (2011), 415 pages. Joyce Carol Oates, in my experience, is a writer you either love or hate (love because of how effortlessly and...
View ArticleMukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
Rating: ★★☆☆☆ Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa, by Peter Godwin. Grove Press (1996), 418 pages. “I think I first realized something was wrong when our next-door neighbor, oom Piet Oberholzer, was...
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