I wrote this review two weeks ago. Today it is 75 degrees outside. Crazy Texas weather. The saying is if you don't like the weather in Texas, wait around. It'll change.
What a crazy week! As I write this I am stranded in my house because, unlike the north, we do not have equipment to clear our roads. What am I talking about? This:
Our back porch:
From our 2nd floor:
At least we still have power. My sister lives in Denton, just north of Dallas and they are having rolling blackouts.
Still listening to Carols from King's College Choir.
I bought this book because I enjoyed the author's previous book, "How I Came Into My Inheritance."
While the writing here is as witty and sparkling as that book, I must say that I felt that it would been more appropriately titled: "How all these People Used Me, Treated Me Poorly, and Ripped Me Off Because of the Really Bad Choices I Made in my Friends and Sex Partners."
Maybe I just found the history of her parents and their relationships with her more intriguing.
The most interesting part are the chapters devoted to when she did finally settle down and marry the Publisher, Ben Sonnenberg (author of Lost Property: Memoirs and Confessions of a Bad Boy). They got married with their eyes wide open, because he already had M.S. and reading about the road they took as his condition disintegrated from using a cane, to a wheelchair, to being paralyzed from the neck down before finally succumbing is poignant and alone worth the price of the book.
Well, no. Also the chapters about her Russian relatives who somehow survived Stalin's genocide, including the ones who moved to the U.S. and then moved back to the newly minted Soviet Union to live in a "Socialist Utopia" is painful and touching as it imparts a fascinating part of history: Anti-Semitism. Somehow her relatives thought Communism would eradicate that defect in Russia's make up. They were wrong.
Gallagher lived in an interesting world (still does for all I know, she's in her eighties). She's a writer, living in New York City. Her life is right in the middle of other writers, artists and all sorts of bohemian folk that are the ingredients to an interesting story, or so Kerouac believed when he wrote, "On the Road."
I don't find them all that interesting. After reading about so many immoral, selfish people with chaotic lives, they start to blur together.
Still, I would rank Strangers in the House above Kerouac's On the Road, maybe due to Gallagher's writing, which is very good, or because she was able to delineate the different people in her life, giving them a little more individualistic color.
Anyway, the book is still engaging and I read it in two sittings.
While the writing here is as witty and sparkling as that book, I must say that I felt that it would been more appropriately titled: "How all these People Used Me, Treated Me Poorly, and Ripped Me Off Because of the Really Bad Choices I Made in my Friends and Sex Partners."
Maybe I just found the history of her parents and their relationships with her more intriguing.
The most interesting part are the chapters devoted to when she did finally settle down and marry the Publisher, Ben Sonnenberg (author of Lost Property: Memoirs and Confessions of a Bad Boy). They got married with their eyes wide open, because he already had M.S. and reading about the road they took as his condition disintegrated from using a cane, to a wheelchair, to being paralyzed from the neck down before finally succumbing is poignant and alone worth the price of the book.
Well, no. Also the chapters about her Russian relatives who somehow survived Stalin's genocide, including the ones who moved to the U.S. and then moved back to the newly minted Soviet Union to live in a "Socialist Utopia" is painful and touching as it imparts a fascinating part of history: Anti-Semitism. Somehow her relatives thought Communism would eradicate that defect in Russia's make up. They were wrong.
Gallagher lived in an interesting world (still does for all I know, she's in her eighties). She's a writer, living in New York City. Her life is right in the middle of other writers, artists and all sorts of bohemian folk that are the ingredients to an interesting story, or so Kerouac believed when he wrote, "On the Road."
I don't find them all that interesting. After reading about so many immoral, selfish people with chaotic lives, they start to blur together.
Still, I would rank Strangers in the House above Kerouac's On the Road, maybe due to Gallagher's writing, which is very good, or because she was able to delineate the different people in her life, giving them a little more individualistic color.
Anyway, the book is still engaging and I read it in two sittings.
9 comments:
For some reason (ignorance!) I always thought that Texas would always be warm. Maybe those cowboy movies I watched in my childhood had something to do with that, too.
We've just gone into autumn and the weather is lovely most of the time.
Hi Sharon - It is striking how your outdoor patio looks like mine. Up to a few days ago we had a similar amount of snow.
I am glad to hear that you never lost power.
I am see how too many books bout the degenerative artist types would start to wear thin after a while. Still as you say, this kind of books van be interesting.
wow: you had more snow than we did! crazy is right! this sounds like an interesting tale of the struggles and pain of living in Russia under Stalin as compared to the U.S.... i've read that Stalin was responsible for a number of deaths of almost twice what Hitler slew; many from being exiled to the extreme east to build roads and towns under extreme conditions...
Too many memoirs are self centered navel gazing wastes of time .... although I enjoy your review, I’ll skip the navel gazer’s book ....
Hi Carol,
We are normally warm, super hot, for most of the year and really don't get below freezing in the winter. This is the first time it snowed here in almost a decade.
In New Jersey, it would have been a delightful snowy day to curl up with a cup of something hot and watch snowflakes fall outside your window.
Texas is not prepared for such snow. It froze our gas lines, burst our water pipes and iced over our roads. Yet the next week it was melted and around 60F 15.5 C). Such is our schizophrenic weather here in the Lone Star state.
Hi Brian,
I think we can always get something out of books even if we don't entirely agree with or even like the author's viewpoint or lifestyle. I just hope I can be honest and objective when I review the book.
You are very good at that.
HI mudpuddle,
You're exactly right. Both Stalin and Mao Zedong killed ten times as many people, yet for whatever reason they don't get the mention that Hitler does.
I'm currently reading a biography of Trotsky and it is extremely interesting.
RT
You are very right. I've always felt naval gazing was a self devouring exercise. Eventually there's nothing left.
Yes friend you did get snow in Texas and lots of it too. So glad to read that you had power. Amazing too how a week can make so much difference in the weather. It can be like that a bit here in Ohio too.
Thanks as always for the review of "Strangers In the House". If you read it in two sittings it must have kept you turning the pages.
Hope you are doing okay...I bet like me you are missing your Mom! We know though where they are is far better than anything we can imagine Hugs!
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