Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life [Paperback]

Abigail Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 17, 2001

A beautifully crafted and inviting account of one woman’s life, Safekeeping offers a sublimely different kind of autobiography. Setting aside a straightforward narrative in favor of brief passages of vivid prose, Abigail Thomas revisits the pivotal moments and the tiny incidents that have shaped her life: pregnancy at 18; single motherhood (of three!) by the age of 26; the joys and frustrations of three marriages; and the death of her second husband, who was her best friend. The stories made of these incidents are startling in their clarity and reassuring in their wisdom.

This is a book in which silence speaks as eloquently as what is revealed. Openhearted and effortlessly funny, these brilliantly selected glimpses of the arc of a life are, in an age of excessive confession and recrimination, a welcome tonic.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a series of poignant vignettes, each complete within itself, Thomas succeeds in conveying an engrossing life story in surprising depth. A novelist (An Actual Life), teacher of creative writing and grandmother of six, Thomas is a fine writer who spells out the bare facts of her life with dispatch. Pregnant at 18, she married the first of her three husbands. After eight years, she and her three children moved to her parents' house in New York. After several years, she remarried. With her second husband, a physicist, she had one child before they divorced. Eleven years later, she married her present husband. Thomas looks back at her younger self with affection, drawing a compassionate portrait of a young woman seeking to make a life for herself and her children, coping with domestic chores and her own conflicting needs. Thomas writes with serious intent and dark humor about her parents, her sister, motherhood, her children and grandchildren, but her most affecting scenes describe the illness and death of the man who was her second husband. Even the structure of her memoir is elegiac, with its three parts titled "Before," "Mortality" and "Here and Now." Sorrow mixes with joy in this beautifully crafted memoir as she remembers her second spouse as a lover, husband and, finally, friend.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Snippets and vignettes from the late 1960s on magically unfold in the story of novelist Thomas's life. Amazingly, despite the short entries (some only several sentences), the reader grows emotionally attached to her husbands, sister, and children. With a flair for visual imagery, Thomas (An Actual Life) allows readers into her continued relationship with her second ex-husband, whose life is cut short by myelodysplasia. Interspersed are the details of conversations between Thomas and her sister. It's as if Thomas has allowed a camera to peer into her life while family, friends, and lovers narrate with running commentary. The humor and love intertwined throughout the book make it a surprisingly delightful story, just right for an afternoon or evening of reading, and Thomas's solid writing makes the characters rise out of the pages. This is an ideal purchase for libraries with discussion groups--there is a lot to talk about after the reader puts down the book.
-Joyce Sparrow, St. Petersburg P.L., FL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (April 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385720556
• ISBN-13: 978-0385720557
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #457,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars OLDER, WISER, AND A TREASURE FOR ALL October 4, 2000

By Gail Cooke HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Reading Safekeeping: Some True Stories From A Life, a memoir by Abigail Thomas, is much like being in conversation with a trusted friend - defenses aren't necessary, smiles abound, tears flow unashamedly.

The author, who established her literary mettle with three previous novels, most memorable for me, Herb's Pajamas (1998), writes close to the bone and straight from the heart as she reveals her life in a series of affecting vignettes. All of these engagingly candid sketches are short, some as brief as a paragraph. Yet, brevity adds to their luster.

Ms. Thomas's life was partially formed by the 1950's, a time when love was defined to her adolescent mind by parents who still closed their eyes when they kissed, and she thought 'We might all live happily ever after if only I could find the right man.' But she is no longer the girl who sang 'Hey Jude' everywhere as 'her prayer, her manifesto,' she is now thrice wed, the mother of four and grandmother of six.

Recalling her marriage at the age of eighteen Ms. Thomas notes, 'We were children, not meant to be married, but we did make beautiful babies.' A decade later, with three youngsters in tow, she ran away from her husband to live in the basement of her parents' New York City home.

It was some two years before she married again, this time to a bachelor of forty-six, a man who 'thought it gave a woman the upper hand if you told her you loved her.' He, the man with whom she spent thirty years and had one child, is at the center of much of Ms. Thomas's memoir as she delicately traces the arc of their relationship from love to rancor and back to love again. There was acrimony before and after their divorce. She does not remember when they became friends again, but writes of him, 'Now that nothing was expected of you, you were free to give.' She, too, gave as she cared for him during his final illness. To this day, it seems, she misses him, saying, 'It is so hard to comprehend gone.'

Safekeeping is studded with conversations between Ms. Thomas and her sister. At times the author is goaded into being more precise in her recollections. At other times, the sisters laugh, remembering their mother who 'didn't exactly spend her days in a red-checked apron plying us with little goodies,' but made sure they knew 'where Ovid was banished.' A poignant sister-to-sister encounter is a telephone conversation which ends in an argument. They both hang up, then immediately try to call each other back. 'Once upon a time anger was the final destination, but not now,' Ms. Thomas observes. 'Because we are older now, and we know what we want.'

At one point, following the break-up of her second marriage, Ms. Thomas despaired of being able to find a job because she didn't know how to do anything but fall in love. Not so. Most definitely not so. She knows what is treasure and what is dross; what to keep and what to discard. Today she teaches writing at New York City's New School. With Safekeeping, she teaches life.

- Gail Cooke

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another brilliant book by Abigail Thomas April 28, 2000

By Jill Gates

Format:Hardcover

After reading Getting Over Tom, An Actual Life, and Herb's Pajamas, I was thrilled to get Abigail Thomas's new book. This book is brilliantly written, revealing emotions that I before now didn't think could be expressed through written material. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has read anything by Ms. Thomas before, and to those who have not yet been introduced to this author's wonderful writing style. The book will make you laugh and may even make you cry. Ms. Thomas courageously reveals things that many people keep to themselves. I thank Ms. Thomas for sharing her life with us and writing such a wonderful book.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it and August 3, 2000

By Jean Brown

Format:Hardcover

weep and laugh and most of all feel all the emotions life holds...Thomas writes______"this is not what I expected. I expected pure joy, and here are joy and sorrow mixing into the same moment." Doesn't that express so often how we feel, this book is filled with so many moments that I identified with...how can you not love a woman who writes ..the truth was she didn't keep the can opener anywhere. The can opener was wherever she'd last left it; the can opener was where she found it. Abigail Thomas reveals so much of herself in this book but even more one finds so much of theirself as well...it does leave one wanting to know even more about Thomas and her life.