![]() ![]() ![]() Their lives (and so this book) are very evidently a product of New York City. Sadly, those voices, though with undertones of affection and grace notes of warm vulgarity, sound mournful chords of bitter anger, resignation, and cynicism. The story is skillfully wrought, shifting effectively from past to present and playing the two voices against each other in a way that shows their perfect familiarity without losing impact on the reader. Gornick escaped via her intellect: books, City College, more books, graduate school at Berkeley, and finally a life as a journalist and essayist. Her father died young, leaving her mother to mourn for 30 years, a martyr to an ideal of romantic love. Gornick, author of In Search of Ali Mahmoud: An American Woman in Egypt, Essa vs in Feminism, and The Romance of American Communism, was born and raised in the Bronx, her family among the ""urban peasants"" living in tenement houses. In both form and locale, it is as though characters from a Grace Paley story objected to their minimalist treatment and set out to fill in the rest of their lives. It is fascinating, despite its litany of regrets, pathos, and cheerless introspection. ![]() A biography/autobiography of mother and daughter that measures out their two lives in stories and conversations that manage to be at once coarsely dramatic and intensely real. ![]()
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