How I Came Into My Inheritance: and Other True Stories [Paperback]

Dorothy Gallagher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 13, 2001

Dorothy Gallagher began her literary career fabricating sensational stories about celebrities for a pulp magazine whose other writers included Mario Puzo and Bruce Jay Friedman. Nothing she made up, though, could rival in color and drama the true story of her own family; Russian-immigrant Jews who lived in Washington Heights, swore allegiance to Marx and Stalin, and tried to ignore the realities of the new world in which their daughter had to make her way. Her mother tells Dorothy that the black girls who beat her up after school are the real victims. Her cousin Meyer returns to the Ukraine during the thirties and finds, to his astonishment, that the whole village is near death from starvation; still he retains his belief in Stalin's leadership. Dorothy moves into a loft on the Bowery, and her father scrounges wood for her stove from nearby vacant lots. She signs a contract for a book with a famous editor and is plunged into despair when he rejects her manuscript. Her Aunt Clara is murdered in her Bronx apartment, and Dorothy is questioned by the police. These stories stand on their own vivid, ironic, darkly funny, and completely original in style. Taken together, they create a unique, brilliantly realized world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gallagher's previous nonfiction (Hannah's Daughters: Six Generations of an American Family and All the Right Enemies: The Life and Murder of Carla Tresca) chronicled other people's lives. Now she turns her considerable talents to her own immigrant family's history, and the result is an autobiography written with the elegance and simplicity of a fine novel. The individual chaptersAthe "true stories" of Gallagher's lifeAbeautifully render her experiences growing up as the child of left-wing Ukrainian ?migr?s in 1940s New York. Discussions about Stalin and Trotsky were the stuff of everyday life; a framed picture of Lenin hung in the attic (which, Gallagher explains, she always thought was a picture of her grandfather). Gallagher recounts anxiously hiding her family's copy of the Communist Daily Worker in the New York Post, as well as her frustrations with Camp Wochica ("Workers' Children's Camp," she assures us, "in case you thought it was your standard inauthentic Indian name"). The family's friends and relatives are as richly vivid as fictional characters: an aunt sells lingerie to prostitutes during the Depression; a family friend is found mysteriously murdered in her bathtub; an uncle recites poetry to his fellow nursing home residents. Gallagher effectively conveys the sense of familial narratives that have been handedAsometimes with great solemnity and at other times carelesslyAfrom one generation to the next. Agent, Georges Borchardt. (Feb. 16) Forecast: Rapturously blurbed by literary luminaries Alice Munro, Susan Minot and James Salter, and supported by author readings in New York City, this resonant memoir is an obvious pick for fans of Jewish autobiography and New York history. If it garners the enthusiastic review attention it deserves in mainstream and Jewish publications, it could break out to wider audiences.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-The boroughs of New York are fertile ground for ethnic traditions to flourish, but bumpy territory for the daughter of Russian immigrants who embraces communist philosophy. In this memoir, Gallagher introduces her parents at the end of their lives and then works backward to impart the tribulations of her colorful family dynamics. The personalities of her aunts, uncles, mother, and father are like a road map, with cloverleafs that eventually merge into Gallagher's life-the choices made for her and those she pursued independently. The story picks up speed with her post-teen dalliances. She describes with humor her attempts at various jobs and relationships before finding a niche in tabloid journalism and then writing books. Young adults will like the coffee-klatch style of writing and just might get a fresh insight into their own heritage.

Karen Sokol, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (February 13, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375503463
• ISBN-13: 978-0375503467
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,041,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Parents and Politics in Perfect Prose, March 1, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: How I Came Into My Inheritance: and Other True Stories (Paperback)

Dorothy Gallagher applies dry-eyed wit and candor not only to her fiercely difficult parents and their numerous associates but also to herself, which makes "How I Came Into My Inheritance" a lesson in revelation. What sets this book far above the usual memoir is the author's abiltity to tell a story, her instinct for the telling detail, the killing choice of a word. She knows how to write, and the reader cannot resist her.

While she is exceptionally good (and funny!) at illustrating the politics that defined her childhood (she would have been surprised to learn that all children didn't go to socialist summer camp), Gallagher is mesmerizing when she writes about her parents aging. She captures the exquisite heartbreak and confusion both for child and parent, and she does it with no sentimentality whatsoever.

In this age of the lazy, glossy-mag confessionals, Gallagher's book is a triumph of sophisticated observation and highly skilled prose. It will raise your standards for anecdote, memoir and family history.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a small gem, April 8, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: How I Came Into My Inheritance: and Other True Stories (Paperback)

This brief memoir can easily be sandwiched into our busy lives, and what a reward it is for those who read it. It is a partly sad, partly funny, very engrossing story of the end of Ms Gallagher's parents' lives and the effect on her, which we come to understand gradually as she reveals more of her past. Her bizarre childhood is revealed with a light touch, and her unique perspective on the time period is fascinating. It will make you smile, it has a familiar ring to anyone dealing with aging and loss, and is both a good read and a comfort. What more could one ask for?

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary memoir, February 23, 2001

By 

Ann Nocenti (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How I Came Into My Inheritance: and Other True Stories (Paperback)

This book is fiercely honest, reads like a hardboiled swoon, with dark, delicious, surprising humor throughout. The first chapter, which involves a hilarious bit of deathbed hustling on the part of the author, is a defiant shot that says: judge me, go ahead, I dare you. Born into an eccentric family of Russian immigrants, the author's earliest remembrances are seasoned with the tarnishing legacies of Trotsky, Stalin, Marx. How these ideas filter into a child's mind and then play out in her adult life is what makes the rest of the book so touching, and often, so funny. The chapter about her job inventing star gossip for tabloid mags is alone worth the cover price. Highly recommended.