Lee Martin tells us in his memoir, “I was never meant to come along. My parents married late. My father was thirty-eight, my mother forty-one. When he found out she was pregnant, he asked the doctor, ‘Can you get rid of it?’” From such an inauspicious beginning, Martin began collecting impressions that, through the tincture of time and the magic of his narrative gift, have become the finely wrought pieces of Such a Life.
Whether recounting the observations of a solemn child, understood only much later, or exploring the intricacies of neighborhood politics at middle age, Martin offers us a richly detailed, highly personal view that effortlessly expands to illuminate our world.
At a tender age Martin moved to a new level of complexity, of negotiating silences and sadness, when his father lost both of his hands in a farming accident. His stories of youth (from a first kiss to a first hangover) and his reflections on age (as a vegan recalling the farm food of his childhood or as a writer contemplating the manual labor of his father and grandfather) bear witness to the observant child he was and the insightful and irresistible storyteller he’s become. His meditations on family form a highly evocative portrait of the relationships at the heart of our lives.
"Both frank and compassionate, Martin's tales will entertain memoir readers as well as fans of his novels."—Rick Roche, Booklist
— Rick Roche
Acknowledgments vii
Colander 1
Never Thirteen 11
Drunk Man 28
You Want It? 40
The Fat Man Skinny 58
Who Causes This Sickness? 69
Such a Life 89
Twan't Much 108
Election Season 111
The Classified Ad 122
A Backward Spring 141
Somniloquy 155
Take, Eat 173
Not at This Address 188
All Those Fathers That Night 203
Anonymous
Posted June 15, 2012
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
Lee Martin tells us in his memoir, “I was never meant to come along. My parents married late. My father was thirty-eight, my mother forty-one. When he found out she was pregnant, he asked the doctor, ‘Can you get rid of it?’” From such an inauspicious beginning, Martin began collecting impressions that, through the tincture of time and the magic of his narrative gift, have become the finely wrought pieces of Such a Life.
Whether recounting the observations of a solemn ...