Customer Reviews

Survival Stories: Memoirs of Crisis

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There's a whole slew of books out that strive to inspire via "happy ending" stories. The prayer is answered, a mysterious stranger appears to set things right in the nick of time. But as Reynolds Price, one of the authors of in this collection writes, "The answer to most prayers is: No." In "Survival Stories" Editor Kathryn Rhett presents unanesthized stories of the people whose lives took that hairpin turn, got the fatal diagnosis, bore the child that would never get better, lost the face to snarling huskie or the jaw to cancer, failed at marriage not once but twice...all the things you hope, pray or smugly believe righteous living will stave off, but happen any way. This book is sobering, clear-eyed, and, in spite of being filled with people whose bodies, minds, souls have been flayed, inspiring, for these authors have all gone on living. They write of the will to survive that is what you are left with once every layer has been painstakin! gly peeled away.

This genre defining anthology proves essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary memoir.Highlights include the editor's lucid and exacting introduction, and affecting essays by Rick Moody, Lucy Grealy, Natalie Kusz and Richard McCann. Taken together this impressive collection offers both the challenges and consolations we expect of great literature.

I was very pleased with this book and continue to go back to it for inspiration and ideas on how to write a memoir. This book is exactly what I was looking for. It seems to be designed to help people, like myself, who need to write their story. Stories of suffering are important to the ones who have been through suffering themselves or have been a caretaker for the sufferer. This book has many short stories and excerpts from books from varying authors, some of whom were students of the author. I didn't quite know when I ordered this book if it would be what I was looking for, but it turns out it is perfect for what I need right now. I am so thankful to have run across this fascinating book.

This was an excellent collection of memoirs. I had read some of them and others I have made a notation about to get a hold of them. I had stumbled upon this book in a half price bookstore and I was very pleased to find it. :) As I read the memoirs I was reminded time and again how much I love memoirs!!

In this anthology, subtitled "Memoirs of Crisis," writers as diverse as Jamaica Kincaid, Lauren Slater, Frances Mayes, Nancy Mairs, William Styron and Isabel Allende. Topics range from racism, physical and mental illness, and death and dysfunction in families. In "Black Swans," Lauren Slater poetically describes her battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder and her ambivalence about Prozac. In "Healing Powers," Floyd Skloot recounts his struggle with cancer. In "Vital Signs," Natalie Kusz describes a childhood attack by dogs that left her sightless in one eye. All explore the nature of crisis and what it means not only to recover, but to be rejuvenated as well.