Customer Reviews

Memorizing Time

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Raised in post WWII Brooklyn by immigrant relatives, Greenberg takes us from her dad's bedtime tales of his dangerous rides through wolf-ridden forests in the old country to Greenberg's own journey through hippie-era California.

Throughout she presents these colorful and strange times without the usual sentimental gloss spread across memory in order to make the past easier to bear. Especially good is the way Greenberg describes and attends to sounds and their meaning to her.

Memorizing Time by Laura Greenberg made real a neglected child's sad life of both hope and despair. Her triumphant final entrance into a more satisfying adulthood made me want to cheer her aloud. Hooray for hard work and perserverance! Over and again she tells of feeling that now, finally, she might be a part of a grander world with more to offer than joyless subsistance. The opening description of her disturbed grandmother can not be forgotten. I admired her bravery in exposing herself in describing her neglect and abuse of her cats. Nothing to be proud of, but clear in its show of how cold and angry a girl can be when deprived of basic encouragement and love. She illustrates an abusive father with a single stark scene that gags the reader and makes one wish they could have rescued her. But Ms. Greenberg helped herself; she is the rescuer. A hopeful and uplifting tale.