Henry Holt Review by David Starkey Darrin Bell’s The Talk joins James Spooner’s The High Desert as the second superb memoir published within a twelve month’s span about growing up…
Category: Memoir & Biography
Chasing Me To My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay A black boy, just young enough to walk through town alone, hears a truck rumbling down the dirt road near a cafe. The truck pulls…
All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
Simon & Schuster Review by David Starkey What in the world are they thinking, those uniformed museum guards standing in the corners of the galleries, looking alternately stern and bored,…
In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey by Jeff Biggers
Melville House Review by Linda Lappin Sardinia’s landscapes captivate visitors: pink granite cliffs whipped into weird shapes, massive basalt boulders, tawny hills where tiny wild horses roam, dunes of sparkling…
Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams
Crown Review by Brian Tanguay One anecdote in Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You captures the essence of Lucinda Williams, the acclaimed American singer/songwriter. In 1993, Williams won…
A Place in the World by Frances Mayes
Crown Review by Linda Lappin In her new memoir, A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home, Frances Mayes, now in her eighties, looks back on the houses,…
True West: Sam Shepard’s Life, Work, and Times by Robert Greenfield
(Crown) Review by Brian Tanguay There are many ways to describe Sam Shepard, but the one word that immediately comes to mind for me is protean. Playwright. Actor. Director. Screenwriter.…
Six California Kitchens: A Collection of Recipes, Stories, and Cooking Lessons from a Pioneer of California CuisineSix California Kitchens by Sally Schmitt
Chronicle Books Review by George Yatchisin Sally Schmitt’s posthumous publication Six California Kitchens proves you can write a powerful memoir one recipe at a time. Whether the book will become…
God’s Ex-Girlfriend: A Memoir about Loving and Leaving the Evangelical Jesus by Gloria Beth Amodeo
IG Publishing By Walter Cummins The title, God’s Ex-Girlfriend, suggests a Dear John letter to explain why the author broke up with the Campus Crusade for Christ and its evangelical…
Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us by Rachel Aviv
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Review by Walter Cummins Like Rachel Aviv, the people whose mental issues she explores in Strangers to Ourselves are driven to write, some with works that…