Customer Reviews

Cravings: A Sensual Memoir (Bluestreak)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Even though the punctuation is unorthodox, this is the way I think sometimes (in fragments). It wasn't distracting or hard for me to understand. I can also closely identify with the emotions brought forth in this text in terms of growing up in the same era and losing a parent, and believe that most "baby boomers" would feel the same way. This was wonderful summer reading!

Jyl Felman is an excellent writer who captures very moving and powerful experiences in an economical style that held my attention and had me wanting more. Ms. Felman juggles many emotions in this short work. The reader finds herself dealing with mother/daughter relationships, Jewish history, feminism, lesbianism, the Holocaust, and food. I highly recommend this book.

While Ms. Felman's book is meant as a commeration of the death of her mother, and thus one feels some sympathy, I felt that her book was self-indulgent. Most particularly because of its usage of indecipherable punctuation, (a usage that implies a desrespect for the reader), but also because of the fact that almost every other paragraph seems to be either a request for pity or a request that one concur that the world is a rotten place. In transactional analysis, such cynisism and victimhood is known as "grievance collecting," and one does begin to feel that one is functioning as Ms. Felman's therapist.

The story is compelling but I can't make it past the first 50 pages because of the way the author puntuates. Her writing style is very distracting. I do not recomend this book.

I read this book in preparation for a class that I took of Jyl's while I was attending Brandeis, where Jyl teaches (last I heard- I graduated 1999). Because I knew Jyl, I heard her voice in my head reading that unusual puncuation. It makes a lot more sense if you know her. A lot of her personality and individuality came across. Jyl has a amazing style and grace that I admire greatly, and is an excellent professor. She made us write on the spot, and read our stuff aloud right in class. There was always something going on, something emotional and tender- just like in the book. I was at once comfortable and extremely uncomfortable- when it got personal. I began to wonder about my relationship with my two sisters. Definitely an experience and well worth the time to understand the structure of the book.