Customer Reviews

For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book was one of the best essay collections I've ever read, and I highly recommend picking it up if you enjoy them. Rooney manages to be both thoughtful and hilarious at the same time - there's some beautiful moments and funny ones, and they're usually within the same piece. Her voice is distinct and makes all of the essays flow together nicely - there's no jarring transitions between them, which is impressive. I was sad when it ended, because I liked her and the people she wrote about. Definitely hope to read more from her soon.

Pluck
Kathleen Rooney is a young writer, and I expected For You, For You I am Trilling These Songs to be the work of a young writer. It isn't. This is the work of a mature author. Sentences flow, images leap and dance, characters breathe and speak. The author cares so the reader cares, too. It's what happens with a really good book.

These are personal narrative essays. The writing is often deeply moving, and often hilariously funny, and always compellingly readable. It is also heartbreakingly personal and intimate. This is not just another clichéd story of your typically confused and misused young woman in the big city. The character Kathleen is not that, not that at all. She practices kindness and values integrity. How refreshing is that? But this is real life. Real things happen, real situations arise, and we do not really worry because this girl has pluck and she will find a way.

If you haven't already, it is time to discover the writer Kathleen Rooney. Scroll up a bit and buy the book and be prepared to fall in love.

Kathleen Rooney accomplished one of the more difficult feats of book-craft here, and that's the creation of a book that reads as readily and intuitively as confessional storytelling while still avoiding the chronic "too-much-information" pitfall this implies. Admittedly I don't read much work like this in general, but its quality was obvious from the first page and didn't let up. Rooney lets the reader in on interesting slices of her life, providing tangential rather than head-on details, and weaves them into a very smooth, readable book. Despite its easy adaptability to the casual, beach-bag reader, there are moments of touching self-disclosure both subtle and explicit that showcase her understanding of nuanced pacing and storytelling. And there are moments of true brilliance as well, particularly the section titled "I Will Catch You", which is easily the most cogent thing I've ever read on the subject of collegiate plagiarism, and I immediately forwarded to a college-age niece of mine.

A very enjoyable read and highly recommended.

Awesome, awesome collection of stories and essays. My favorite was the one about driving. The author makes some really insightful reflections throughout the book and her voice makes you want to keep reading, no matter what she's discussing. I've never even heard of Weldon Kees, but the piece on visiting the places he stayed at was one of the best essays.

Ms. Rooney has the formula for the personal essay down, and this book is a great instructor for anyone who wants to learn how it's done. From reading these essays, I don't much like Ms. Rooney -- her values and her politics are very different from mine, and she doesn't strike me as someone I'd want to see in a position of influence -- but she does know how to diddle the words. She writes with clarity and fluency, and with style.

Kathleen Rooney makes me like genres that I don't pay attention to otherwise: poetry, academic nonfiction, short short stories... But this collection of smart and laugh-out-loud funny personal essays are where she really shines. She's got a gift for storytelling, and tells plenty of good ones in this book: taking her cousin for one last pedicure before entering a convent, getting Brazilian-waxed in Brazil, chucking it all to move to Tacoma to teach at a small religious college, driving around the Senior Senator from Illinois... it proves that good storytelling doesn't have to involve overdoses, eating disorders, or borderline personality disorder. I couldn't put it down!

I devoured this book in just a few hours, on a bus ride. It's a great book to read in transit, as Kathleen Rooney is too in these eight essays about her twenties (which were in step with the 00's), exploring her relationships with her friends, family, and colleagues. Thinking about it this way, the cover is perfect, a framed photo of Rooney that's on a radiator, as if preparing for yet another move.

Rooney's prose is reliable and stylish, but especially good in essays #3 and #8, written in the third person, featuring two of her most entertaining characters. She also made me want to read some of the writers she talks about - Weldon Kees, the poet whose apartments she seeks out on a visit to New York City and George Lakoff, whose work she assigns to her interns. (The first essay did not make me want to get a Brazilian!)

Any of the essays could be read on their own, but since they begin at a job in Chicago, then she ends up there by the end, it fits together nicely, with its themes of trust and belonging pulsing throughout. Highly recommend!

Just when I wondered if maybe, just maybe, this book was only for women in their twenties, my mother (56) whipped through it in two days' time. Granted, she was trying to get well-informed on the scandal revolving said book, to get what she calls, "the angle nobody else had." However, my mom gets from this book the same thing that I do. When I ask her what to write in the review, she said, "How many ways are there to write `it was really really really good?'" So there. In slight elaboration so that you get some substance out of this review, (sorry mom), I think that this collection of personal essays explore common themes for twenty-something in the post-Y2K world. Kathy/Kathleen is in the job market / marriage market / academic market journey with us (or perhaps, for us) without relying on any of the stereotypes, trite turns of action, or blasé "ho hum my life will get better in my thirties (shrug)," messages that others in this genre do. Rooney offers a fresh, yet humble voice in her calm telling of a regular woman's tale. I detest the insertion of an actual stereotype by writing, "I wish I had written it," but there you go. I do.

A great read! With a fresh-essay-format, this slice-of-life memoir is engaging and eloquent, the author a rare bird. Keep the songs coming...

Kindle edition review
While I was able to enjoy the book on my Kindle, I had a few minor problems with the formatting of this edition. This is the first book of Ms. Rooney's to be converted to Kindle format. Text to speech is enabled, if anyone really uses that robotic voice to listen to books. The main problem I had was that the font was quite thin and difficult to read. Even though it was very beautiful to look at, I don't think it was the best typeset to use for the Kindle. Other minor issues with the Kindle edition include a fuzzy/out of focus cover and a start location at said cover, rather than at the first page of the first story.
Overall, it is a nice edition of the book, but Counterpoint may want to work on some of these details for future Kindle books.

Please refer to the rest of the reviews for more in-depth reviews on the literary content. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Ms. Rooney's lovely prose. Her stories show her masterful command of language and pure voice, marred only by the occasional self-congratulatory and shallow reflections on her power over men. However, those moments made the book even more relatable, since I am close to the author in age and place in the world. My favorite was "I Will Catch You," a well edited channel of hard rage that was a pleasure to read. Ms. Rooney is a talented writer and I look forward to reading more of her work. Counterpoint, keep putting stuff out for the Kindle, and get better at formatting!