When All the World Was Young

by Donna | Aug 26, 2009 | Memoir

Rating:  When All the World Was Young, by Barbara Holland.  Bloomsbury (2005), 304 pages. This intelligent, literary memoir is about childhood during much simpler times—the 1940s, though it could easily have taken place any time pre-80s, before urban sprawl...

Losing Mum and Pup

by Cindy | Aug 23, 2009 | Memoir

Rating:  Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, by Christopher Buckley.  Twelve (2009), 251 pages. Buckley’s memoir about his famous father and socialite mother tends to engender either appreciation (for a witty, interesting story about losing one’s...

Twenty Chickens for a Saddle

by Donna | Aug 20, 2009 | Memoir

Rating:  Twenty Chickens for a Saddle: The Story of an African Childhood, by Robyn Scott.  Penguin (2008), 452 pages I definitely recommend this book for anyone who is fond of memoirs about growing up in an exotic locale with an eccentric family. The author...

Finding Mañana

by Donna | Aug 18, 2009 | Memoir

Rating:  Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus, by Mirta Ojito.  Penguin (2006), 302 pages. There was so, so much I didn’t know about Cuba. Considering that the country is only ninety miles away and intricately tied in many historically significant ways...

The Only Girl in the Car

by Cindy | Aug 13, 2009 | Memoir

Rating:  The Only Girl in the Car, by Kathy Dobie.  The Dial Press (2003), 240 pages. This book has much in common with the memoir Lucky. Both authors describe a rape in excruciating detail, while at the same time writing about their families and their years...

Wasted

by Donna | Aug 13, 2009 | Memoir

Rating:  Wasted, by Marya Hornbacher.  Harper Perennial (1998), 320 pages. “It was that simple: One minute I was your average nine-year-old, shorts and a T-shirt and long brown braids, sitting in the yellow kitchen, watching Brady Bunch reruns, munching on a...