Vista Del Mar: A Memoir of the Ordinary

This remarkable book joins the company of "self–work," deep acts of memory that serve to illuminate the present by shining the clear light of careful regard on the past. The book finds company in the work of D J Waldie's Holy Land, Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and the profound My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

In 1996 Neal Snidow found himself at a personal impasse as he and his wife struggled in vain to have a child. Locked in sadness at their predicament, in mid–career as a coll...