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Summary: "At Home in the World" is completely engrossing from page 1.
Review: "At Home in the World" is an engrossing account of someone who to date, has had a very full life. You never get the sense that Joyce Maynard is afraid of meeting life on its own terms. What particularly struck me was how completely readable the memoir is; even without the Salinger piece, this book stands as an insightful, credible memoir.
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Summary: A fascinating, sad book, very well written.
Review: Like millions of other teenagers, I fell uder Salinger's spell when I read Catcher in the Rye. Today I recommend the book to my high school English students. And I remember being vaguely jealous back in the early 70s when I read that Joyce Maynard was having a relationship with him. Suffice it to say I am no longer envious. Reading this book made me sad for her, and horrified at his behavior. Instead of being angry at her for shattering any image of Salinger as Holden's alter ego, Salinger's fans should appreciate this glimpse into the author's dark side. His perverted crushes on young girls is sad -- but his cruel treatment of them is even worse. Maynard, of all his victims, is probably the only one who will ever be able to deal out the punishment he deserves. Frankly, he deserved every word of it, and should consider himself lucky she waited this long to unload. The rest of the book is just as absorbing, and Maynard isn't any easier on herself than she is on anyone else. I enjoyed the book tremendously, and not just for the chapters on Salinger. The story of her marriage is just as engrossing and makes her vividly human. You want to know Maynard and sit down and drink a cup of coffee with her, even if she, as her sister tells her, "takes up so much space." And you get the distinct impression she wouldn't meet her fans on the porch with a psychic shotgun, as her former paramour would. I recommend this book to anyone whose childhood wasn't perfect, whose marriage wasn't an oasis, and whose life didn't turn out, perhaps, exactly as planned.
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Summary: The Cult of Victimization
Review: This book is written in a flat, emotionless tone that begins to grate after just a few chapters. Women who love self-help books and stories of victimization should run out to their nearest bookstore (or throw this one in their Amazon.com Shopping Cart) without further delay! There seems to be no person who enters Ms. Maynard's life who does not exploit and victimize her in some way, beginning with her mother. Then, of course, her father, her sister, the trucker who picks her up hitchhiking, J.D. Salinger, her ex-husband. And SURPRISE!, Ms. Maynard suffers from anorexia, bulemia, low self-esteem, even faulty breast implants! Good lord. I finished this "brutally honest" memoir realizing that the author fails to tell us anything about "herself," other than relating a laundry list of events that give us no insight whatsoever into who she is, what she feels, what kind of person she is, what kind of friend, roommate, lover, wife. I suppose we should be fascinated to learn that J.D. Salinger had a slightly unusual obsession with frozen peas and used the word "kiddo" a lot. But frankly, this book left me cold.
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Summary: Tripe, nothing but self-serving tripe
Review: Can I give this one no stars? Yuck! I've followed - not avidly, you understand - Joyce Maynard's writing for years and always thought it rather shallow and self serving. This book proves it. Grow up, Joyce. You've had your fun with J.D. Salinger. You took revenge. Tacky, tacky, tacky...
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Summary: GET A LIFE, JOYCIE!!!!!
Review: If I could give this book zero stars, I would--in fact, if Amazon provided negative integers for ratings I'd push that envelope. So poor little Joyce Maynard just got victimized by that reclusive old coot, J.D. Salinger, huh? Bull-dinky! She was nineteen, a published author, and most aggressive in her pursuit of the man. And what did she learn? The same weird stuff we all know about ourselves and each other, whether it's an obsessive desire to pick dead skin off one's feet or, as in Salinger's case, a fondness for peas in their cryogenic state. Who gives a monkey's butt? The one thing we all know about Salinger for sure is that he treasures his privacy. In writing and publishing this complete waste of time, Maynard the victim has proven in spades that she has become the perpetrator. This is a hostile act, devoid of either literary or pop-psychological/self-help merit, and a total sellout from a desperate woman who has already alienated throngs of people in both the book and magazine world. Hope you're happy, Joyce. Selling out like this may put your kids through college, but it's bad karma.
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Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: Why did Joyce's mother let her go off and live with Salinger? Was she proud that her daughter was the teen-age mistress of a famous but deeply weird writer? Now we know J.D. Salinger had - uh, er - certain problems and eccentricities. Do we care? Are better off having read this? Shallow observations...a big bore.
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Summary: skim it at the bookstore for a snarly laugh at the author
Review: I felt dirty and soiled by skimming it, but was comforted by the thought that I was in no way giving this loon any royalty money. For real fun, read the last section, in which Maynard presents her controntation with Salinger, trying to paint it in terms of the Abused Girl Speaks at Last...and failing miserably. You cheer Salinger on with every word he speaks.
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Summary: Great read!
Review: Okay, I had my doubts about reading this book because Joyce Maynard talks about her relationship with Salinger. But I see it as he is her teacher through life-he teaches her about writing, being honest with herself, and accepting herself as she is-not anyone else expects her to be. If anything, I do not see this book about Salinger. I see it as a woman finally coming to peace with her children,her parents, her sister, and finally herself. She is, at last, at home in the world.
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Summary: About the Author
Review: JOYCE MAYNARD is the author of several books, INCLUDING TO DIE FOR, WHERE LOVE GOES, DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, BABY LOVE, and her memoir LOOKING BACK, which she wrote at the age of eighteen. She has written for many national publications, including THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE and PARENTING, and is a regular contributor to "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio. Joyce Maynard now lives in northern California with her three children.
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Summary: Flap Copy
Review: The daughter of brilliant and complicated parents-an adoring alcoholic artist for a father and a dazzling, funny, and wildly frustrated mother, driven to see her daughters achieve what had never been possible for herself-Joyce Maynard grew up with a pen in her hand, writing and publishing stories before she reached her teens. In the spring of 1972, when she was a freshman at Yale, Maynard wrote a cover story for THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE about life as a young person in the sixties. Among the hundreds of letters she received in response was one from the famously reclusive author J.D. Salinger. They embarked on a correspondence. Within months she had left college and moved in with him-believing, despite their thirty-five-year age difference, that she had found her soulmate and that they would be together always. Shortly before the publication of Looking Back, the book she wrote over the course of her time with him, Salinger sent Maynard away-an event so devastating that she herself retreated from the world for two years in a New Hampshire farmhouse. AT HOME IN THE WORLD explores the story of Maynard's family, her relationship with Salinger, and the way the legendary writer's influence, along with that of her parents, reverberated throughout her life in the decades that followed. In these pages, she chronicles her painful reentry into the world, her development as a writer, her marriage, her struggle to become a healthy parent to her own children, the death of her parents, and the years, following the end of her marriage, when she set out to rebuild her life. A crucial turning point in Maynard's story occurred when her own daughter turned eighteen-the age Maynard herself was when Salinger first approached her. Compelled to achieve a greater level of understanding, Maynard made the decision to break her twenty-year silence about what had taken place with Salinger. AT HOME IN THE WORLD is at once both a tale of an extraordinary and unique experience, and a universal story about coming of age, the experience of loss and confusion, and the struggle to become whole. In these pages, Maynard confronts with unblinking honesty, compassion, and surprising humor the most painful truths of her experience. But ultimately, hers is not a story of devastation or regret. AT HOME IN THE WORLD is about redemption and triumph, and the wisdom acquired when at long last a woman embraces the disquieting truths of her history.
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