Customer Reviews

The Memoir Club

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book was my first introduction to Kalpakian and I purchased it for two reasons...I was drawn to the beautiful cover and I was enticed by the premise of six women taking a college extension course in memoir writing and, consequently, forming friendships beyond the classroom. I had thoughts of two of my other favorite female "bonding" books -- The Saving Graces by Patricia Gaffney and Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik.

I think this book started off much slower than the two books I've already mentioned but once it got going, I simply could not put it down. I actually stayed up reading until 2:30AM because I couldn't go to sleep without knowing how it would end. It's much deeper than others I've read with similar premises yet Kalpakian doesn't dwell on the gloom and doom of some of their pasts. She instead celebrates their futures.

You definitely don't fall in love with these characters even though they're well drawn out by the author. Perhaps they're too real -- like anyone else you might meet in your daily life. There seems to be more meat in their stories (their memoirs) giving the author the ability to flesh them out without being too obvious about it.

Through the memoirs they're writing in their extension class, the reader gets to glimpse their past lives and it's a great way to go back in time within the confines of the book. The most interesting thing the women in the memoir class learn is that "the memoir is not and should never be confused with the truth...As a result, truth belongs to the teller." So, while the memoir is the "teller's" truth, it might not essentially be "the truth." While writing these memoirs, each of these women will come upon secrets in their past that might not be as truthful as they want their pasts to be.

I highly recommend this book and encourage the reader to join these women as they delve into their pasts and form a new future together at the same time.

I would, however, be remiss if I didn't mention something that almost ruined this book for me. In the first sentence of the "Acknowledgments", the author thanks her editor for her "wise editorial eye." My advice to her editor is twofold...get a pair of eyeglasses and go back and get a refresher course in English grammar. There are no less than twenty different errors in this book. When I hit the first one or two, I shook my head and moved on. When there got to be more than one on the same page, I got angry. If we as readers are willing to spend good money on a hardcover book, I realize that the publisher can't always guarantee that we'll love the story but they should be promising a well-edited book. Shame on you St. Martin's Press.

For very different reasons, six women sign up for a University extension course in memoir writing. Nurse Nell and Dr. Caryn Henley work at the Women's Uptown Clinic, and Nell has hoodwinked the grieving doctor into taking the class. Nell hopes it will help Caryn come to terms with the loss of her two children and estranged husband in a plane crash. Nell and Caryn's stories are arguably the central threads in the plot, certainly the most dramatic, but the other women we come to know also have compelling reasons to document their lives.

By the end of the official writing course, we know something of the conflicts each woman faces. Francine, a recent widow, volunteers her showcase home to meet every Wednesday evening and the enigmatic instructor Penny Martin agrees to extend the class for those who wish it. Francine's memoir, like her entire life, is devoted to fostering her husband's scientific reputation. "Marc's career was my career," she explains to the disapproving younger members of the group. But her requests for input from his colleagues yield more than she has bargained for, and they require a complete re-examination of her life.

Sarah Jane Perkins writes to confront her unorthodox upbringing. Jill McDougall writes to explore her Korean heritage. Rusty Meadows writes to explain herself to the daughter she gave up as an unwed teen. Caryn Henley writes (although not about her loss) for the same reason she works so hard at the Clinic: to get through the days without killing herself. As events unfold and the women reveal themselves to each other through their writing, they form strong bonds.

And boy, do events unfold! I wondered if this might be a "quiet" book, dealing mostly with revelation through reflection. But there is a heavy dose of action, centered on an anti-abortion wacko who targets the Women's Uptown Clinic. Ms. Kalpakian is every bit as skilled at describing gun battles as she is in describing the subtle epiphanies that accompany writing about the past.

The plot flows like the Skagit River that washes away Sarah Jane's childhood home. My only quibble with the novel was a bit of metaphysical fuss around the memoir teacher. For me it detracted from the satisfying real life dramas.

The author's pacing and masterful control of point of view captivated me. By the end I identified with all of the memoirists and tearfully agreed with Big Nell's parting sentiments: "Why shouldn't every day be an anniversary? Why shouldn't every summer be the last? Why shouldn't you say to yourself on any old day that rolls, ebbs, and flows into one another: I'm going to remember the light through these leaves, or the sound of the rain."

Overall THE MEMOIR CLUB is a tender, wise and witty page-turner. It deserves a wide readership.

--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol

A group of six women find themselves in a university extension class about writing memoirs. Their teacher is Penny Taylor, an irascible and somewhat mysterious woman who urges the women to open up and tell their most gut-wrenching secrets. Surface stories will not suffice. Penny bullies them until each of them tell their true stories. Two of the women, Caryn and Nell, are close friends. Nell has been supporting Caryn through a tragedy in her life and she feels that the class will serve as a catharsis for Caryn's grief. Francine has always been in her famous husband's shadow and after his death, a secret is revealed which causes her to seek an identity of her own. Jill is a woman born of Korean parents and adopted by an American couple who later divorce, causing great disruption in her family. Rusty still grieves over a daughter she gave up for adoption and Sarah Jane, copes with the influence her parents had on her. Author Kalpakian is at her best when she is developing and revealing the separate characters in the book. She falters when she inserts a mystical quality into the character of Penny and when she too-neatly wraps up the loose ends at the end of the book.

Kalpakian is clearly a gifted writer, but she didn't use her talents to their fullest extent here. There were so many viewpoints and time shifts that I could not get a firm grasp on the characters or their stories. Every time I started a new chapter I'd have to flip back to refresh myself on who the characters were. This made it hard to get into the story and hard to care very much.

The novel should've been longer to fully flesh out the characters, or she should've stuck to two or three storytellers.

I'd like to check out some of her other novels to see what she can really do.

This book is heartbreakingly honest and breathtakingly affirming of life. This is the kind of book I keep in my library and read once a year.

The Memoir Club is in the top ten of my recent reads. I have read it twice and it will remain on my book shelf for a long time. The personalities of the members of the club form the basis for a complex and plausible story. There are surprises that you don't see coming in the story and the ending has provided me with a wonderful guide for keeping the significant, and insignificant, days of my life in perspective. I recommended it as a selection for our reading group and they all enjoyed it. I am sure I will read this again and again.

I thought this was a very good book on female friendships, bonding and support. At first it seemed like it was just going to go into the emotional pasts of the various women who come to take a memoir class, but then there is a violent episode in the middle that was very surprising, and that threw the book into an unexpected direction.

The only problem with the book was--as some reviewers already pointed out--it wraps up everybody's stories in a very "happily ever after" kind of way that feels very contrived for characters who up until then had seemed like very real people with real problems.

This was a book about how the lives of a group of women is interwoven together by the memoir club and how they come together in support of one another.

Book is quite used but okay, & came in a very timely fashion.

I REALLY ENJOYED THE PREMISE OF THE BOOK. IT WAS REALLY INTERESTING TO SEE THAT AFTER THE FACT, WHEN YOU PUT THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE, YOUR TAKE ON THINGS CAN CHANGE. THE BOOK WAS GREAT AND HARD TO PUT DOWN UNTIL THE END. THE LAST TWO CHAPTERS JUST RUINED THE BOOK. WHO THEY THINK THE GROUP TEACHER IS IS TOTALLY UNBELIEVABLE AND THE LAST CHAPTER TIES EVERYTHING UP IN A "HAPPILY EVER AFTER MODE". IT REALY RUINED THE BOOK.