Customer Reviews

A Little Fruitcake: A Childhood in Holidays

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4 star:		(1)
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A Little Fruitcake is my pick for holiday gift this year. It's a wonderful collection of stories about family and holidays that you can feel comfortable giving to anyone from your traditional Grandma to your quirky and hip college roommate (and it sure beats an actual fruitcake). I'm going to send copies out as early holiday gifts, maybe around Thanksgiving, to help everyone get into the holiday mood.

I would have loved this book even if it wasn't so well written, as the author grew up in Maine and is exactly my age, so it was like a trip down memory lane to read about his childhood--exciting trips to LaVerderies to get Christmas presents, the feeling of going to the big city when you are really going to a small Maine city, the extra sunny day when I too went inside from playing in the Maine summer to see Nixon resign, picking a Christmas tree from the woods and trying so hard to find the perfect one among the imperfect Maine scrubby forest trees, the transition from the huge colored bulbs to smaller ones that gradually took place, the feeling of a Christmas pageant in a small church, Grants Christmas albums---WOW!

This memoir is told all in Christmases, little samples of the author's life growing up fairly poor in Norridgewock, Maine, half Cuban and therefore half an outsider (although the fact that the other half was an old Maine family probably made it easier).

I know too the feeling of leaving home young and never really going home, and how the guilt when you do visit can be quite overwhelming. This book evokes the time and place so well that it brought me to tears several times. A real triumph.

I loved this book. I laughed and I cried and I wished that the story didn't end.
Understanding thru the eyes of a child, the the hopes and disappointments, which surround the holiday season, lead to the reality for the young adult what in life is really important.
I hope everyone reads and loves this book as much as I did.

give them A Little Fruitcake. As spirited and hilarious as Sedaris' Holidays on Ice, A Little Fruitcake veers between laugh-out-funny and a warm loving look back at childhood holidays. Valdes Greenwood's voice is fresh, wise, with just the right amount of bite -- the perfect holiday guest (unlike the great aunts you actually have to spend Christmas with!)

Aside from the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed reading about some of David's childhood, I loved his light hearted honesty about many aspects of his life.

A Little Fruitcake: A Childhood in Holidays
Wonderful read for getting in the holiday spirit - warm, vivid, witty and fun!

This is a book I ordered LAST YEAR! Don't know how it was sent to me againa. I returned the book 11-16-08. Please credit my account. The most recent books I ordered were the Guernsey, Potato Peel Pie Society. They were ordered on a Friday and I received them on Saturday, WOW what service. Thank you very much. However, last year I did enjoy the book A Little Fruitcake. It's a pleasure doing business with you. Again, please credit my account in the amount of the price for this book. Sincerely, Rosalyn Skala