Sleeping Arrangements [Paperback]

Laura Shaine Cunningham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2000

"Here is Lily Moore at 10, as judged by her fifth grade teacher: 'Unsatisfactory...Hair matted, uncombed, disheveled appearance. Soil under nails.' She has in addition been AWOL from school for 37 full and 38 half days...She lives in a bizarre apartment whose living room furnishings consist of a gold lame castro convertible and two pink bath mats--her choice. She shares the habitation with a senile old woman and two bachelors, one of whom habitually cooks popcorn for breakfast wearing a pith helmet...All indications to the contrary notwithstanding. Lily is living a blessed life, as depicted in Laura Cunningham's unromantic, spare, funny, enchanting memoir." --The Washington Post

"A wonderfully vivid chronicle of a young girl's coming of age...funny and sad, irreverent and generous...A model memoir." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Sharp-witted and funny but never mean. A lovely novelistic memoir." --Julie Salamon, The Wall Street Journal

"Original, quirky, poignant, and hilarious." --Los Angeles Times

"A winner...life-affirming." --San Francisco Chronicle

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Adopted by her two eccentric bachelor uncles after her mother's death, the author describes growing up in an unorthodox but happy Bronx household during the 1950s. "In an effective memoir that delineates a real, if idiosyncratic, world, Cunningham captures a special slice of New York with humor and integrity," observed PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This is Cunningham's humorous memoir about growing up in an extremely unusual Bronx household in the 1950s. The 1989 book garnered wonderful reviews from fellow authors and critics and should charm new readers.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (July 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573228230
• ISBN-13: 978-1573228237
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #703,234 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laura Shaine Cunningham is the author of eight books, including the acclaimed memoirs, Sleeping Arrangements and A Place in the Country which were first excerpted in The New Yorker magazine. She has also published the novels Sweet Nothings, Third Parties,Tamara (as L.C.Shaine), Beautiful Bodies, Dreams of Rescue and the YA novel The Midnight Diary of Zoya Blume. Her books have been published in ten foreign countries. Her fiction has been published in the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly and many literary quarterlies. She is also a playwright and her plays have been produced on the main stage at Steppenwolf Theater, on Theater Row in New York,also staged in Manhattan at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theater Club and Ensemble Studio Theatre and are extremely popular in Europe- she has many current international theater productions, in Russia, Bulgaria, Argentina, London, Estonia, Finland. Her plays are often anthologized and appear in many Best Plays of...including Best Plays of 2009-2010,Best Plays of 2007-8, and most preceding years' collections. In addition, her plays have been published in many Vintage collections, including Plays for Women, Leading Ladies, Take Ten, Take Ten II, Laugh Lines, Shorter, Faster, Funnier...and several of her plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing- Beautiful Bodies, Bang, and Cruising Close to Crazy.
In addition, she is a journalist and has written many columns for The New York Times, The New York Observer, the London Times and magazine articles for Esquire, the Ladies Home Journal, Organic Living and other periodicals.She is also Artistic Director of the Memoir Institute ([e-mail], and lectures often on memoir and theater at universities and at literary festivals. She has won many awards for her writing, including two NEA Fellowships, in literature and theatre, and two NYFA awards in creative writing and play-writing. She is a member of HB Playwrights Foundation, and The Actors Studio Playwright Unit; she is also an alumna of New Dramatists. and Actors and Writers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Explores the essence of  Family, October 5, 2000

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Sleeping Arrangements (Paperback)

SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS is an utterly irresistible and engaging memoir by Laura Shaine Cunningham, which describes her life growing up in the Bronx between the ages of 5 and 16. At the beginning of the book, she is taken care of by her mother and sole parent, Rosie. (It isn't until the end of the memoir that the reader has anything approaching a clear idea of what happened to her father, Larry. Even then, it stays fuzzy because Laura never finds out herself.) Soon, however, Rosie dies, apparently of cancer. Young Laura ("Lily") then comes under the care of her mother's eccentric brothers, 38 year old Gabe and 40 year old Len - two "O.B.s", i.e. "old bachelors". A bit later, the group is enlarged when Lily's senile maternal grandmother, Etka, moves in.

Since I did my growing up as a little boy, it was enlightening to see a glimpse of how it was endured by the other half. It was also quite amazing to read what details Lily remembers of her earliest school experiences. I can barely remember at 5 going to the Hill & Dale Nursery School in Pacific Palisades, California, and that we were expected to take afternoon naps - perhaps for the mental relief of our minders, not ourselves. In any case, Laura relates the events of her childhood with humor and pathos. When her grandmother moves in, she expects the old lady to conform with her experience of her friends' grandmothers, i.e. to be a cookie maker. Yet, when left alone with her for the first time:

"I look at her, expecting her to toss off her tailored jacket, tuck up her cuffs, and roll out the cookie dough. Instead, she purses her lips in an expression she learned as a child, and tilts her head in a practiced way: `Now, perhaps, you could fix me a little lunch?'. It isn't supposed to be this way, I think as I take her order: `toasted cheese sandwich and a sliced orange'".

Later, when on a child's guilt trip reliving the sins of her young life, Lily remembers:

"And last and worst, on the final night of my mother's life, when Gabe held the phone to my ear and said, `Say goodbye to your mother', I had made a joke of it, and said, `Goodbye', only it was ... forever."

Today, when the repercussions of a broken home loom large in society's consciousness due to the well publicized meltdowns of a sick few, SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS serves as a gentle reminder that home, for a child, is where the love is - whether it comes from a father, mother, uncles, aunts, or grandparents.

I liked this book a lot, and I think you will too.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking and loving tribute to an unconventional family, April 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleeping Arrangements (Plume) (Paperback)

Laura Cunningham's book starting with her early life with her mother is so infused with symbiotic love it will take your breath away. When her mother dies, she is only 8 years old with no visible support system and no father. Her two bachelor uncles, true eccentrics, take on her care lovingly if not clumsily. They are intelligent and gentle, not of this world. Their way of looking at people and life with break your heart. I could not put the book down and finished it within hours. I laughed out loud at her ability to tell her story, and yet often was so moved by her heartache I had tears in my eyes. I am now looking for everything that Laura Cunnhingham has written and have become a big fan. Do not miss this one!

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most beautifully written, moving, touching, funny book!, October 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleeping Arrangements (Plume) (Paperback)

I am so knocked out by this book! I cannot believe that it hasn't received more recognition. Laura Cunningham is an incredibly talented writer and her description of her life as a child in Brooklyn is so...heart-wrenchingly beautiful, it has taken my breath away. Cannot recommend this book more highly. The subject matter may seem boring, but when you start reading, you will not be able to put it down. It is also laugh-out-loud funny...I mean REALLY funny. Go buy it, but forget about getting to sleep early.