An American Childhood

 This book was written in the 80’s, and as you can see from the blurb on the front cover, it helped “usher in the age of memoirs.”  I think there have become too many memoirs by half out there, so that’s not why I read (listened to) it; I wanted, instead, to read Annie Dillard.  She grew up in Pittsburgh in the 50’s, but her childhood (based on my childhood) was a rather privileged one.  Country clubs, summer retreats, white gloves and boy/girl dancing classes.  Not something I was all that excited hearing about in so much detail.  Detail is a signature feature of this book, and too often, IMHO, there was too much of it.  Move on, I would think and vow to stop reading.  But then something more interesting would come along, and would be just enough to keep me going (plus, I hate giving up on a book.)  I did enjoy her discovery of books and the library–her love of reading.  I could empathize with her desire to go somewhere, anywhere other than where she had grown up, and I appreciated/envied her mother’s support of that.

But none of this is really unique, is it?  I can’t recommend that you put it on your reading lists.

Now I have started listening to a novel by Kate Atkinson, Life After Life.  Rather caught up in it early on, so the signs are good for this one.