American Elegy: A Family Memoir

Rating:
Summary: One of our best book club meetings of 1997.
Review: American Elegy was selected by my book club in 1997, and our discussion of it resulted in one of our best meetings of the year. Any person interested in the facts, legends, and beliefs that create a family's identity will appreciate this book. As someone who has been dubbed her family's "historian", I feel a kinship with Jeffrey Simpson and other writers who seek to reconcile their family's past with the realities of the present.

Rating:
Summary: One of our best book club meetings of 1997.
Review: American Elegy was selected by my book club in 1997, and our discussion of it resulted in one of our best meetings of the year. Any person interested in the facts, legends, and beliefs that create a family's identity will appreciate this book. As someone who has been dubbed her family's "historian", I feel a kinship with Jeffrey Simpson and other writers who seek to reconcile their family's past with the realities of the present.

Rating:
Summary: Captures the essence of what we heard from our grandparents
Review: I have always been fascinated with the stories my parents and grandparents told me.Apparently Jeffrey Simpson was as well, and has taken those stories and gathered theminto a wonderful account of his family and how they arrived at the point of his arrival.He weaves humor and pathos together in a remarkable way. At the end of thebook I felt that I had sat with him while he was growing up and hearing the stories.It helped that I grew up across the river from Parnassus, and knew very well the scenesthat he was describing. This is the book that I've always wanted to write, but didn't knowhow to go about it