All in the
Family
In writing about those nearest but not always dearest, these memoirists struggle with identity, forgiveness, and love.
| 1. |  |
Elegy
for Iris by John Bayley |
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St Martins Pr (Trade) Hardcover - 275 pages 1 Ed edition (January 1999) |
$16.07 $6.88 Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com In one of literary history's ghastlier ironies, Iris Murdoch, the author of such highly intellectual and philosophical novels as A Severed Head and Under the Net, was diagnosed in 1994 with Alzheimer's disease, which slowly destroys reasoning powers, memory, even the ability to speak coherently. Her... Read more
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| 2. |  |
To
See and See Again : A Life in Iran and America by Tara Bahrampour |
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Farrar Straus & Giroux Hardcover - 368 pages (January 1999) |
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| Amazon.com The daughter of an American singer and an Iranian architect does justice to both her heritages in this thoughtful memoir. Tara Bahrampour spent most of her childhood in Tehran, but in 1979 she fled from there with her family as the unfolding Islamic revolution made Iran unsafe for anyone with... Read more
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| 3. |  |
The
Sacred Willow : Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family by Duong Van Mai Elliott |
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Oxford Univ Pr (Trade) Hardcover - 608 pages (January 1999) |
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| Amazon.com Most books about Vietnam focus on the French who colonized it or the Americans who sought to "save" it. This combination of memoir and family history shows the Vietnamese "as they saw themselves as the central players in their own history." The author's perspective is particularly enlightening... Read more
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| 4. |  |
1185
Park Avenue : A Memoir by Anne Roiphe |
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Free Press Hardcover - 256 pages (May 1999) |
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| Amazon.com "He married her because she was rich" is the author's bleak assessment of her handsome, unfaithful father's relationship with her unhappy, insecure mother. Anne Roiphe describes with equally brutal candor a childhood largely spent with the governess until she was old enough to mix her mother's... Read more
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| 5. |  |
Memories
of a Lost Egypt : A Memoir With Recipes by Colette Rossant |
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Clarkson Potter Hardcover - 176 pages 1 Ed edition (March 1999) |
$14.70 $6.30 Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com Colette Rossant's privileged childhood was marked by tragedy and dislocation. Her father, the Egyptian descendant of Sephardic Jews who eventually settled in Cairo, met her French mother in Paris, where he was the European buyer for his father's department store. He died in 1939 when Colette was... Read more
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| 6. |  See picture |
44,
Dublin Made Me by Peter Sheridan |
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Viking Pr Hardcover - 278 pages (May 1999) |
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| Amazon.com Theater director Peter Sheridan's bracing memoir is timelessly Irish in its lyrical, word-drunk portrait of a boisterous family touched by tragedy: his younger brother, Frankie, died, aged 10, from a brain tumor. The book is also very much a document of the 1960s. It opens on New Year's Eve as... Read more
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| 7. | See picture |
Clear
Springs : A Memoir by Bobbie Ann Mason |
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Random House Hardcover - 298 pages (June 1999) |
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| Amazon.com Bobbie Ann Mason's marvelously tactile and textured memoir has the same blunt yet supple prose that distinguishes her novels In Country and Feather Crowns. Examining her roots in rural Kentucky, where she was born in 1940, Mason unravels her family's history and considers its impact on her as a... Read more
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| 8. | See picture |
The
Boy on the Green Bicycle : A Memoir by Margaret Diehl |
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Soho Press, Inc. Hardcover - 368 pages 1 Ed edition (May 1999) |
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| Amazon.com The accidental death in February 1965 of Jimmy Diehl, just 14, sent the entire Diehl family into a downward spiral. But this searching, unsparing memoir by Margaret Diehl (just 9 when her brother died) suggests that there were plenty of demons lurking in their spacious Montclair, New Jersey, home... Read more
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| 9. | See picture |
Comrades
: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals by Stephen E. Ambrose, Jon Friedman (Illustrator) |
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Simon & Schuster Hardcover - 139 pages (June 1999) |
$8.40 (40%) Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com This tender book about male friendship will probably surprise those readers who know Stephen Ambrose best for his histories of World War II and biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Born in 1936, Ambrose acknowledges in the introduction to his memoir that men of his generation do not speak or write... Read more
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| 10. | See picture |
The
View from Alger's Window : A Son's Memoir by Tony Hiss |
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Knopf Hardcover - 256 pages 1 Ed edition (June 1999) |
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| Amazon.com Although Tony Hiss firmly disbelieves the charge that his father was a Soviet agent who passed along State Department documents, the guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss is not entirely the point of this memoir. Instead, drawing on the letters Alger sent his wife and son during the nearly four years he... Read more
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| 11. | See picture |
The
Velveteen Father: An Unexpected Journey to Parenthood by Jesse Green |
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Villard Books Hardcover - 224 pages (June 1999) |
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| Amazon.com Journalist Jesse Green's delightful memoir makes it quite clear that the pleasures and perils of parenting are always the same--even for a gay 37-year-old man who stumbles into it by falling in love with a person who has an adopted son. As Green puts it in a typically well-turned phrase, "fatherhood... Read more
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| 12. | See picture |
Farewell
: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood by Horton Foote |
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Scribner Hardcover - 288 pages (June 1999) |
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| Amazon.com The marvelous second chapter of Farewell sets the mood for everything to come in the noted playwright's memoir of his childhood in tiny Wharton, Texas. As a young Horton Foote questions his parents about their "elopement"--they had to go five blocks across town to be wed by a Baptist minister... Read more
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| 13. | See picture |
The
Boy from the Tower of the Moon by Anwar F. Accawi, Helene Atwan (Editor) |
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Beacon Pr Hardcover - 208 pages (May 1999) |
$16.10 $6.90 Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com "I have been building a pyramid since I became aware I was here ... in 1947, when I was five," writes the author of this luminous memoir. Each "stone" in this pyramid represents a key moment in Anwar Accawi's life, recounted in chapters of polished prose that bring vividly to the reader's eye his... Read more
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| 14. | See picture |
Paper
Daughter : A Memoir by M. Elaine Mar |
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Harperflamingo Hardcover - 292 pages (August 1999) |
$16.10 $6.90 Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com Born in Hong Kong to parents who immigrated there from the Toishan region of mainland China, Elaine Mar came to America in 1972, when she was not quite 6. Colorado was quite a shock to a girl who had previously shared a five-room apartment with four other families. "She must be rich," Man Yee (her... Read more
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| 15. | See picture |
Places
Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation by John Phillip Santos |
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Viking Pr Hardcover - 288 pages (August 1999) |
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| Amazon.com Mexican American journalist John Phillip Santos's lyrical and loving memoir explores his family's history in magnificent prose touched with the singing cadences of his Spanish-language heritage yet vibrant with the energy of American English. It's a combination utterly suited to his native San... Read more
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| 16. | See picture |
Of
Time and Memory : A Mother's Story by Don J. Snyder |
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Knopf Hardcover - 304 pages (September 1999) |
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| Amazon.com Sixteen days after author Don Snyder (The Cliff Walk) and his twin brother were born in 1950, their 19-year-old mother died. Her heartbroken husband, Richard, chose to never discuss her with his sons. But when Snyder, now in his late 40s, stumbles across a picture of his parents, he determines to... Read more
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| 17. | See picture |
Ethel
& Ernest by Raymond Briggs |
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Knopf Hardcover - 104 pages (October 1999) |
$14.70 $6.30 Click here for more info |
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| Amazon.com Raymond Briggs's loving tribute to his parents has an emotional power that far exceeds its deceptively simple technique. Graphic in format, the book combines vigorous but sensitive illustrations with dialogue that cogently elucidates its characters' personalities. Milkman Ernest meets lady's maid... Read more
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| 18. | See picture |
My
Kitchen Wars by Betty Harper Fussell |
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North Point Press Hardcover - 240 pages (October 1999) |
$16.10 $6.90 Click here for more info |
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customer rating available (Be the first to review
it) |
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| Amazon.com She may be a cookbook author, but Betty Fussell's extra-tart autobiography is no ordinary gastronomic memoir. For starters, her attitude toward cooking ("the one activity, besides tennis, in which housewives were encouraged to excel") is decidedly ambivalent. A chapter entitled "Attack by Whisk and... Read more
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