Dry: A Memoir
From the bestselling author of Running with Scissors comes Dry—the hilarious, moving, and no less bizarre account of what happened next.
Archive for the 'Biographies and Memoirs' Category
This Boy’s Life: A Memoir
This unforgettable memoir, by one of our most gifted writers, introduces us to the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move, yet they develop an extraordinarily close, almost telepathic relationship. As Toby fights for identity and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a new stepfather, his experiences are at once poignant and comical, and Wolff does a masterful job of re-creating the frustrations and cruelties of adolescence. His various schemes - running away to Alaska, forging checks, and stealing cars - lead eventually to an act of outrageous self-invention that releases him into a new world of possibility.
Customer Review: Intriguing…
The memoir is intriguing. Any male who reads this can, at some point, relate to the follies, plunders, and disappointments Wolff encounters during his adolescence. It is explicit and candid making for an interesting read.
Customer Review: absorbing and painful with moments of comic relief
I’m about 2/3rds through this, and I find it entirely absorbing. Wolff’s writing talent is not in using fancy words or complex forms…just one sentence after another of perfectly pitched prose that feels entirely true and believable. He gains the reader’s trust and empathy early on and never loses them, even though, in my case, I wasn’t much interested in the details of his somewhat sordid and pathetic early years. I keep asking myself this holds my attention, while most memoirs by people I have a lot more in common with don’t. (Not to sound like a snob, but guns, dogs, smoking, drinking, etc. have never been my thing.) I think the reason is that his writing seems entirely transparent, plus you care about him. postscript: I’ve finished it now and towards the end I was increasingly pained by how f**ked up a person Wolff is–or was. It’s troubling and yet the writing is still transparent. You might say he gives us a God’s eye view: if there is a force that knows everything and can look at all our failings, faults and mistakes with simultaneous compassion and dispassion, then I think such a Being would write up Wolff’s early life in the way he himself wrote it. You get a feeling that there is no self-judging or constrictions and nothing to hide: just the truth, the all too human truth.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle, the father of two young childen, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem. After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body which had all but stopped working: only his left eye functioned, allowing him to see and, by blinking it, to make clear that his mind was unimpaired. Almost miraculously, he was soon able to express himself in the richest detail: dictating a word at a time, blinking to select each letter as the alphabet was recited to him slowly, over and over again. In the same way, he was able eventually to compose this extraordinary book.
Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure
Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure
Deceptively simple and surprisingly addictive, Not Quite What I Was Planning is a thousand glimpses of humanity—six words at a time.
One Life. Six Words. What’s Yours?
When Hemingway famously wrote, “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn,” he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way too. The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking, and moving.
