Customer Reviews

Grandmothers: A Family Portrait (North Coast Books)

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

 

 

Reading a book like this is like trying to consume a banquet of innumerable courses. "The Grandmothers" is a book of stories, all true, all passed down as oral history or experienced directly during Glenway Wescott's boyhood. This is a book of vignettes, each vignette demanding attention and wrenching gut reaction. Overwhelming at times, dense with a particular brand of old-fashioned writing ornate, yet deceptively simple, it must be read slowly to be fully understood and savored. Almost every paragraph in this book is so dense with action and information it could easily be expanded into a novel. And in every paragraph, the reader is transported into an era of unrelenting labor and unforgiving illness, of breathtaking ignorance and blind social injustice. Survival was all there was, and this was the kind of life everyone lived. A note: this book was extensively quoted in Michael Lesy's "Wisconsin Death Trip," a first hand, harrowing account of life in rural Wisconsin at the turn of the last century, culled from newspaper clippings and documents. "Wisconsin Death Trip" in turn inspired Stewart O'Nan's "A Prayer for the Dying," another exceptional, bleak, truthful look at life in the "good" old days. I recommend these three books highly.

With the heightened interest in the memoir genre recently, this brilliant novel about a family's history should find a substantial audience. Although told in the third person, it's really about how Alwyn Tower becomes obsessed with his family's history, and from stories told and family albums, puts together the chronicle that becomes the novel. The characters give the book a saga-like quality: some fail in business or in love, some encounter terrible tragedies, some display deep human weaknesses, some find happiness and some don't - but most reveal a heroic make up, a strength of character, or the simple need to deal with adversity the best way they can and then move on, that makes them truly fascinating and worthy of our attention. Westcott is a master at recounting these powerful human stories almost poetically so that they touch us at the deepest emotional levels. The book is profoundly sad and poignant, but also amazingly life affirming and memorable. It's a beautiful book. Those of you who enjoy reading memoirs should definitely get hold of this book and give yourself a treat. It might end up finding a permanent spot on your shelf.

The two previous reviewers have made excellent points about this book which I will not repeat.

I would like to add that if you live in Wisconsin (or the upper Midwest) this book will give you an insight into and an appreciation for the people who settled the place where we live. If you have older relatives or friends I imagine they might appreciate this book, as well. If you have known some of the gritty, older rural Midwesterners, this book gives you a bit of insight into what formed their character, even though their character may have been formed by their parents' or grandparents' experiences.