I Read Books
Nov. 5th, 2009 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutDue to a convergence of circumstances, I finished reading Deborah Digges' memoir, The Stardust Lounge, on Dia de los Muertos, just before I put her picture (and a poem, and a short note) on the altar in the park.
It was easily the best memoir I have read in years and years and years. It may help that it was written well before the current vogue for the form. It may help that it acknowledges the strange shape of memory, that she allows herself to admit what she doesn't remember as much as what she does. (I read a review that complained of this quality in her previous memoir (which I have not read), as if you can only write about your past if you remember it with pure clarity -- or pretend to.)
The Stardust Lounge is the story of Digges and her son Stephen as they both navigate their way through his adolescent struggles -- which include things like getting expelled from school for bringing a gun.
I strongly recommend it to:
* anyone who likes memoirs.
* anyone who has been close to an adolescent boy. The memories this evoked of my brother's far milder, but still troubled, adolescence were a little eerie.
* anyone who loves animals. The family pets are how mother and son reconnect with each other.
* anyone interested in parenting issues.
It was easily the best memoir I have read in years and years and years. It may help that it was written well before the current vogue for the form. It may help that it acknowledges the strange shape of memory, that she allows herself to admit what she doesn't remember as much as what she does. (I read a review that complained of this quality in her previous memoir (which I have not read), as if you can only write about your past if you remember it with pure clarity -- or pretend to.)
The Stardust Lounge is the story of Digges and her son Stephen as they both navigate their way through his adolescent struggles -- which include things like getting expelled from school for bringing a gun.
I strongly recommend it to:
* anyone who likes memoirs.
* anyone who has been close to an adolescent boy. The memories this evoked of my brother's far milder, but still troubled, adolescence were a little eerie.
* anyone who loves animals. The family pets are how mother and son reconnect with each other.
* anyone interested in parenting issues.
