After Visiting Friends is a memoir told like a mystery tale. I thought it was very well written.
How important is good writing to a memoir? I think it's very important. I think it's like the old tale of The Pot of Broth (per Yeats) or Stone Soup (per Danny Kaye). With creativity and writing skill you can make a lot out of a little.
On the other hand, in his memoir, Hainey himself writes that the secret of good writing is good reporting. I know when I have talked to students I've said that a good term paper requires good research. It is almost like a sculpture. If you have plenty of information to work with, it's much to shape that information in a useful and aesthetic way (including by cutting things that don't fit your shape).
Hainey grew up with unanswered questions about his father's death, a loss he suffered when he was six years old. (Actually, there are so many intriguing little things about this short memoir that I could write for paragraphs about it: At one point, Hainey speculates that he might have been a better man if his early loss had not been deepened by the secrecy surrounding it (I longed to know more!); in a publicity video on the Simon & Schuster website, Hainey, a fascinatingly soft spoken man, states that the memoir is really his parents' love story, a claim I'd like to see him prove).
Hainey includes many of his memories of his boyhood in the seventies on the northwest side of Chicago. I think that there's no question that folks who've lived in Chicago, especially in this period, will enjoy revisiting some of the moments and places that Hainey visits in his quest for the truth which is also sometimes a sentimental journey. Hainey's father was a newspaperman and he is a magazine journalist and editor. He's a good storyteller, and I both enjoy and respect that. I think different kinds of readers will find different reasons to enjoy this book.
All the Bright Places is a YA novel. Two teens have perhaps the "cute meet" of all time when they are both thinking about suicide and independently find themselves on the six story-high ledge of a campus bell tower. One talks the other down and they find a great deal of meaning in their ensuing friendship/romance. The boy, Theodore Finch, ensnares the girl, Violet Markey, in a road trip of sorts: a Geography class assignment to wander the wonders of Indiana. This proves to be charming, amusing and affecting and my favorite was the bookmobile farm they visited (but the farmer's backyard roller coaster was great fun, too). This book reminded me of something I hadn't thought about for a long time but which I think is important: the stigma surrounding mental illness and the natural reluctance of those affected to be pigeon-holed in that category.
I've unfairly given both these titles short shrift because of time's winged chariot, etc.
How important is good writing to a memoir? I think it's very important. I think it's like the old tale of The Pot of Broth (per Yeats) or Stone Soup (per Danny Kaye). With creativity and writing skill you can make a lot out of a little.
On the other hand, in his memoir, Hainey himself writes that the secret of good writing is good reporting. I know when I have talked to students I've said that a good term paper requires good research. It is almost like a sculpture. If you have plenty of information to work with, it's much to shape that information in a useful and aesthetic way (including by cutting things that don't fit your shape).
Hainey grew up with unanswered questions about his father's death, a loss he suffered when he was six years old. (Actually, there are so many intriguing little things about this short memoir that I could write for paragraphs about it: At one point, Hainey speculates that he might have been a better man if his early loss had not been deepened by the secrecy surrounding it (I longed to know more!); in a publicity video on the Simon & Schuster website, Hainey, a fascinatingly soft spoken man, states that the memoir is really his parents' love story, a claim I'd like to see him prove).
Hainey includes many of his memories of his boyhood in the seventies on the northwest side of Chicago. I think that there's no question that folks who've lived in Chicago, especially in this period, will enjoy revisiting some of the moments and places that Hainey visits in his quest for the truth which is also sometimes a sentimental journey. Hainey's father was a newspaperman and he is a magazine journalist and editor. He's a good storyteller, and I both enjoy and respect that. I think different kinds of readers will find different reasons to enjoy this book.
All the Bright Places is a YA novel. Two teens have perhaps the "cute meet" of all time when they are both thinking about suicide and independently find themselves on the six story-high ledge of a campus bell tower. One talks the other down and they find a great deal of meaning in their ensuing friendship/romance. The boy, Theodore Finch, ensnares the girl, Violet Markey, in a road trip of sorts: a Geography class assignment to wander the wonders of Indiana. This proves to be charming, amusing and affecting and my favorite was the bookmobile farm they visited (but the farmer's backyard roller coaster was great fun, too). This book reminded me of something I hadn't thought about for a long time but which I think is important: the stigma surrounding mental illness and the natural reluctance of those affected to be pigeon-holed in that category.
I've unfairly given both these titles short shrift because of time's winged chariot, etc.
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