Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? A Memoir

#1097
Title: Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? A Memoir
Author: Roz Chast
Year: 2014
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Pages: 240

Roz Chast joins the ranks of those who demonstrate the capacity of cartoons and graphic memoirs or novels to provide a sophisticated, poignant story.

Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?chronicles the decline and death of Chast's parents. For anyone who has been through this or is close enough to experience fearful anticipation of the lead-up, loss, and aftermath, this anxious, ruminative, funny, freaked-out, overburdened account will feel by turns familiar, squirmily horrible, and perhaps, ultimately reassuring in the existential companionship it provides.

It's probably too much for someone with a very recent loss, but captures well the concern, ambivalence, relief, loss, and broad spectrum of this particular grief process. And it is funny, though sometimes more grimly absurd than slapstick.

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story

#1039
Title: Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story
Author: Christina Thompson
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Year: 2008
288 pages

A good effort to interweave personal and cultural histories. Thompson, an American graduate student in Australia, meets and marries a Maori New Zealander. She alternates between and blends the story of their relationship with the story of European first and later encounters with Maori, analyzing some of the assumptions underlying the European view of the Maori. What's less well explored is her own feelings. I finish the book having enjoyed it, but with little understanding of what attracted her to her future husband "Seven," what their relationship was like, why they moved to the U.S., and what happened as they became a more established couple. All of this is in the story, but it doesn't have an emotional underpinning. Thompson tells anecdotes that purport to use the relationship as a parallel or springboard to the examination of European-Maori dynamics. I was ultimately left wanting more depth.

The Photographer

#1034
Title: The Photographer
Author:  Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, & Fréderic Lemercier
Publisher: First Second
Year: 2003/2009
288 pages

An excellent use of pastiche, with many very wordy pages broken up through the use of both photos and photo-based illustrations. The narrative was engaging and the images really brought it to life. A great addition to your graphic memoirs/non-fiction shelf.

Joseph Anton: A Memoir

#1010
Title: Joseph Anton: A Memoir
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Random House
Year: 2012
636 pages

An enjoyable long memoir by Rushdie. I didn't mind his use of the third person for himself; it made me think about the question of memoir as literary fiction (and indeed, Rushdie the narrator discusses the creation of the personae "Rushdie," "Joseph Anton," and "Joe" by others). Is he a pompous blowhard? I don't know. I've enjoyed his novels and articles even when I haven't agreed with his point. Did he deserve the response to The Satanic Verses? Not in a society that claims to uphold free speech, I thought when I read it and even more so after the attack on the World Trade Center. Can he keep his pants zipped? No, he cannot, which would dispose me to be wary of him if we ever had the opportunity for emotional intimacy.

The audiobook reader, who was otherwise fine, did the worst American accents I've ever heard, and terrible women's voices that made the audiobook dialogue between Rushdie and his wives almost unbearable.

Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India

#1001
Title: Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India
Author: Madhur Jaffrey
Publisher: Knopf
Year: 2005/2006
320 pages

An enjoyable childhood autobiography, followed by an extensive set of recipes. This is a memoir of a life with its ups and downs and personal experiences--World War II and the Partition play a role but are background to Jaffreys's reflections.

Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh

#992
Title: Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh
Author: Anne Elizabeth Moore
Publisher: CantankerousTitles.com
Year: 2011
96 pages

This reads something like a blog, and recounts some of the author's experiences teaching young women in Phnom Penh to make zines.

Golden Boy: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood

#985
Title: Golden Boy: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood
Author: Martin Booth
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2004/2006
Country: Hong Kong [Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China]
352 pages

Booth's memoir recounts a significant time in his life, spent in Hong Kong. It is a fond and in some ways wistful narrative of pre-adolescence, and I enjoyed it very much.