Looking Back on a Life

When Enda’s husband dies, she makes a startling confession to the priest in her small Irish village.  And this confession leads her—as the two sit beside the body of her husband—to tell the story of her life.  To tell The All of It.  As the priest listens to Enda’s tale, he begins to feel the loneliness, the absence, in his own existence.

Jeannette Haien’s slim novel (at 145 pages, you could easily read the entire book in one sitting) is a quiet, beautiful, lyrical meditation on life.  Thanks, Ann Patchett, for the recommendation!

 

Growing Up with the Addams Family

I haven’t read a graphic text in quite a while, and I didn’t realize that Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic was a graphic text when I ordered it.  Given the subject matter—growing up in a funeral home with a closeted father who eventually commits suicide—I was surprised to discover the panels of drawings when I opened the book.

But it works.  It really works.

Alison Bechdel’s memoir is one of the most literate and literary memoirs that I have ever read.  Bechdel is the daughter of two English teachers, and she is a student of literature herself, and these things are evident in her text.  The Great Gatsby, The Importance of Being Earnest, and James Joyce’s Ulysses all figure prominently is Bechdel’s analysis of her childhood.

Though the tragic weighs heavily in Fun Home (the loveless marriage of Bechdel’s parents, the suicide of her father, the guilt that she feels for his death, the secrets that she discovers about his life), there are still many smile-worthy moments in the text.  It’s a thoughtful and thought-provoking memoir in an unexpected form.

 

I Must go in, the Fog is Rising

In a tone that is completely irreverent (some might say snarky), Alan W. Petrucelli examines the deaths of the famous and infamous in Morbid Curiosity.  The book includes chapters on celebrities from the Golden Age of Hollywood, modern actors and musicians, well-known authors, politicians and presidents, and even pets.  Each person gets two or three paragraphs—a little more than a page at most.

This certainly isn’t a vital book, but it does contain a few interesting nuggets.  If only the author (and his editor) had taken a little more time with the final galleys; the book is littered with errors in proofreading and punctuation.