Customer Reviews

Road Song

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I picked this book up in the Alaskana section of Title Wave, a used bookstore in Anchorage, thinking it was going to be an Alaskan story, but happily it's much more universal than that. Natalie Kusz's book delivers two parents who are beautiful misfits bearing difficult baggage--her mother's mother is mentally ill; her father's wartime experience is horrific. That they stay together is enough of a feat, but the love they instill in their children and the family they create with so little material goods is truly amazing. On one hand, it's a story of overcoming hardship, and Natalie's ordeals, while more than any child deserves, are not her father's fault, as one reader's comments seem to imply. That they shape her life and choices, ultimately leading her to life as a writer, is the larger story. One facet of this book no one has commented on is the language and style with which this book is written. It's luminous, courageous, and deserving of continuous reprint. Here's hoping Natalie is hard at work on another book. I for one would be first in line to buy it.

This book was published too soon. It came out in 1990, long before the current memoir craze took hold. That's really too bad because this book is what memoir-writing is all about. Natalie Kusz' story is truly beyond belief; it reaffirms my faith in the whole genre. Here then is the story of a how a seven year old child (Natalie) had her face ripped apart by Alaskan huskies and survived to write about it with an unerring voice. If you don't love her family almost as much as she does by the end of this book, then you're not human. This book is every bit the equal of "The Color of Money" (and probably surpases it as a memoir), a book that became a national bestseller. This one deserves that status as well. Please seek out and read this page-turner of a memoir. You won't be sorry.

My father gave this book to me 6 years ago and and I reread it every few months. The true story of author's childhood is told in a bluntly honest and often painful way. This is a book that all writers interested in writing creative non-fiction need to study carefully. Kusz has mastered the craft. She takes us from California to Alaska with her family in 1969. We are enchanted by her family and the difficult path her parents chose to take in the effort to give their children something more. Even after loss and struggle, when you want to fault her parents for the choices they made, you cannot. Kusz understands them and helps bring you in. Kusz stays away from describing the harsh landscape of Alaska, but the harshness of the land is illustrated when she tells of the family. This book is my favorite memoir to date.

Why did not this book get wider recognition? It's a beautifully written saga of a young girl who moves with her mother, father and three young siblings to Alaska in the 60's. She vividly describes the heartships of living in the near-wilderness under severe conditions, facing and overcoming family financial problems, and above all, a tragic accident that brought her near death. It is a story of perseverance and familly ties. I would recommend it especially to young adults. It's one of the few books I wanted to start reading over again as soon as I finished.

A friend recommended this book, first published in 1990, saying it her FAVORITE" book. Mighty words coming from this particular friend.

I took it on vacation and read the whole thing in two days -- could not put it down.

And incredible, moving, extremely well-written, intense memoir that almost reads like fiction.

Rock on, Natalie. You are my new heroine....

Even after having read this book several years ago, it still remains for me an unforgetable story of courage and resiliency of the human spirit. It is extremely well-written and the scenes so realistically painted that the writer's life remains with me still. As the previous reviewer stated, I, too, can't believe more people haven't found this book, especially since memoirs have become so popular of late.

An accident begins this book--a savage attack by sled-dogs on a little girl walking home from school in Alaska. But Kusz doesn't stop with that appalling event, though a lesser writer might have made it the entirety of a sensational text. Instead, Kusz explores how her family survived tragedy and the years of hardship and pain that followed. Survived--not in the sense of simply enduring, but forging stronger family bonds out of these apparently unendurable trials. Kusz's writing is almost painfully sensuous but never overblown. This is an unforgettable book.

In a culture that demonizes the poor and marginalizes the children of the poor, the Kusz family faces more than just 70 below temperatures, the author's tragic accident, hunger and squalor. Those who live more mainstream (read that affluent and conforming) lives, imagine those who live in rural (or urban) poverty as morally, intellectually and spiritually as well as financially impoverished. What Natalie Kusz does in this unforgettable memoir is to slow the reader down and draw her up close to those who travel that other road-- to allow the reader to view scenes of violence, abuse, charity and grace. The book is beautifully written. The only thing I would argue with is locating the father's backstory so close to the end of the book in one large chunk, instead of interspersing part of it throughout the book where it might shed some light on his own particular demons. Interestingly, I read each of the other reviews of this book and found in every one some bit of wisdom and thoughtfulness. This book is well worth reading twice--first for the story and then for a fruitful discussion of memoir.

Are disasters inevitable? That is the question that kept popping up in my mind as I read this searing memoir, which often reveals things I wonder if the author realized. The Kusz family leaves L.A. to pursue adventures in Alaska, and boy do they find them. Why was seven year old Natalie left on her own to get nearly killed by sled dogs? Is it because her Dad didn't get over the post traumatic stress disorder of his childhood in war-torn Poland, and kept having to recreate scenes of peril in which to test himself? If so, Natalie and the entire family paid a very high price. It was like tempting the devil. The family of six sticks it out in the outback, though God knows why, as they are a cultured family and this is a cultural wasteland. Is it really all that fulfilling to build these rustic shacks by hand, just for the hell of it? It seems like a misguided wilderness dream, and way too much copy is spent detailing the housebuilding, when what I wanted to really know was more of the repercussions of Natalie's accident to her and the rest of the family. She skims over her teenage rebellious behavior as if none of it were important, although it does land her with a child at 16. I feel awful for her siblings, who were kept in the dark about their sister's pregnancy until Natalie came home with a newborn. It is hard to fault a person who has undergone what the author did, but in the context of her family she often came off as monstrously selfish, although she clearly tried to present herself as the hero. Who was it again, who had screaming fights with her martyred mother? How can she blame her other siblings for what eventually happened to her mother when she herself was clearly the catalyst for so much negative energy in the family? We only hear in backhand fashion, for example, that her parents have already been deeply stressed and in debt when she springs a pregnancy on them. Her parents are so giving that they even offer to build her her own house out back, before they even have their own house built! It was almost like some Greek tragedy: Mother, you robbed me of my face, therefore I will wreak havoc on you and all your other children, and you will pay with your .... We don't see the author owning up to the stresses she herself placed on her already beleagured family, nor do we hear enough about the love affair that gave her a daughter. I wanted much much more of what was going on inside her, and much less of the so called "close" family dynamics. Perhaps a serious examination of her emotional life was beyond the author, who was only 27 at the time of the writing. I look forward to a deeper layer of reflection in the future from a more mature Natalie Kusz.

Read this book! I just read it for the second time and came away knowing humanity more deeply. Natalie Kusz is a masterful writer who comes from a family that despite the flaws, is the one we would all love to come home to, outhouse or not.