A Place in the Country

Rating:
Summary: Thank God It's Not Tuscany
Review: Being one of those who thinks that Scarlett O'Hara was better off being left with Tara than with Rhett, I love accounts of finding property. Call it trying to find a life if you like because places do carry with them a particular lifestyle and different ways of seeing. Surely everyone has to be Tuscany-ed and Provenced out of their minds by now. After a while, they all start sounding like novelized versions of the Rough Guide to Europe or somesuch. So this account of a young woman from the Bronx improbably finding her place in the country, a rambling early nineteenth century house called The Inn, is a breath of fresh Atlantic air. But it goes way beyond the tourism of so many other accounts about buying houses, invariably set in Europe, because it delineates a whole life, beginning with a young child's weekend outings looking at real estate with her romantic mother while living in cramped quarters in various relatives' houses, including for some time under an aunt's dining table. What befalls the estate of which The Inn is a part reminded me of a child's story book which shows a pretty country house in the middle of verdant green pastures which is absorbed over time into part of the suburban spread. The Inn and I think its thirteen acres have not yet come to this but the fate of the Lord and Lady of the local manor house and of the farmer's family make this more than some unreal paean to rustic charm. The lights from the local downmarket university campus and the creeping shopping malls are not far away. This is a lovely and lyrical account of finding one's true home and Cunningham's delight in it, notably her love of the dancing cows and their tinkling bells, is infectious.

Rating:
Summary: I couldn't put " A Place In The Country " down.
Review: I found this book very habit forming and was so interesting I just had to keep reading. The tales of going to camp and her guardian Uncles were strange, but funny also. Sad at times and frustrating making her swimming pool out in the field. What a job.
Finding out that the old folks were so poor they had to sell off pieces of the property to keep their heads above all the finances assoiated with such a large estate and they didn't tell her right away.
They weren't allowed to walk where they had been since moving there as the new tentents were not as friendly and didn't want the infringments of strangers on the front of their property. Also the cows in the fields near by in the back fields were quite a surprise to picture all that.
This book was very informative. I really enjoyed reading it!...

Rating:
Summary: Bella New York! better than Provence or Tuscany!
Review: I love to read about dream houses and people getting their wish fulfilled so this story of the poor little orphan from the bronx, who grew up in city apartments, seven people in three rooms, really moved me. The story is as sad as Angela's Ashes but funny as The Egg and I--It is a really fascinating mix of memoir and how a city person can live in the country. I could not put it down as Miss Cunningham lucks out and gets a romantic estate in upstate New York. The writing is as beautiful as the travel books but I liked it more as it is about our home country. It is not pretentious like some of those books --You don't have to be a millionaire to have a dream house come true! This is also a beautiful memoir of a special family. You have to read the first book, too, Sleeping Arrangements, because it dares to go where few writers are willing --the true secret unexpurgated lives of city kids. I was one too! LOVED THIS! What a pair of books! If you ever wanted country property, get this quick!

Rating:
Summary: The funniest book ever for country house people
Review: In SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS, author Laura Shaine Cunningham movingly remembered her life growing up in the Bronx with her single mother, Rosie, until the latter's untimely death, after which Laura's guardians were her mother's two odd-ball bachelor brothers, Len and Gabe.

A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY is essentially a sequel, wherein Ms. Cunningham describes her life from the mid-1950's to Y2K. Indeed, the first couple of chapters reprise events of her life with Rosie and her uncles - all in the context of explaining her developing love for "the country". This is not unexpected in someone who grew up in small, overcrowded, city apartments. Most of the book revolves around the two rural homes in which the author has spent a good portion of her adult life, the Castle and The Inn, the latter having been her abode away from The City for the last 18 years up to the present.

Laura's life has been, in many ways, perfectly ordinary - probably not so different from the general pattern of yours or mine. Perhaps that's why it's so appealing. (We have here not the memoir of an obnoxious diva, whining and overpaid sports figure, or dysfunctional actor.) The author's great ability in sharing is her gentle, wry sense of humor, whether it's telling us about the trials of converting an old underground cistern into a swimming pool, or starting an ill-conceived cottage industry in potpourri pillows, or battling the local fauna over home-grown tomatoes, or the adoption of her first daughter from Romania, or her second daughter from China, or learning the pitfalls inherent to raising chickens, geese and goats. For instance ...

"I spent most of my time preparing the alleged garden, jumping on the end of a pickaxe, trying to tilt the tip of what might be a glacial formation (of rock) that extends to the core of the earth. When at last there was a thin strip of what we could call soil, we stuck in seeds, which were instantly lost and unidentifiable except to the birds that snacked on them. We graduated immediately to seedlings that cost as much as the finished vegetables. In this way, we worked our way up, with credit cards, to the six-hundred dollar tomato."

Not all of Laura's life in the country has been happy. In the later chapters, when she tells of the eventual dissolution of her 27-year marriage, or the neighbors that move away, or die, or just her slide into middle-age, the tone of A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY becomes occasionally melancholic. ("Time is supposed to march on, but now it hurtles.") But, her narrative never loses the sensitivity and poignancy that conveys to the reader the fact that she is, from all evidence, a truly good human being giving Life her best shot. A person that it would be an honor to hug.

Rating:
Summary: This is not a book about gardening....
Review: Laura Shaine Cunningham, a Jewish orphan, grows up in New York City
with two eccentric uncles. All her young life, Laura pines for a place
in the country. Finally, as a successful writer she manages to fulfill
her dream of owing an "estate" outside the city. Like most
transplants from the city to the countryside, Ms. Cunningham spends a
great deal of time lamenting the encroaching population growth that
threatens to overwhelm her bit of paradise.

I enjoyed this book
until Ms. Cunningham achieved her goal owning a bit of former
farmstead. The early episodes involving her life with family members
in New York City are extremely funny. After she moves away from the
city and her family, her book reads like every other BOBO story -- got
educated, got a career, got married, made money, bought a house, had
kids. True, she does adopt two foreign-born children, and she does
eventually break up with her spouse, but these incidents are not fully
developed, and seem like tacked on bits to enlarge the book.

I liked
Ms. Cunningham's writing enough to read other books, and I think for a
start I'll find the one she wrote abouther life with her two eccentric
uncles. Her writing is much better when it's original and involves her
take on her own unique experiences as a child. Her country life reads
like a watered down version of a cross beteen James Herriot and Beverly
Nichols (read their books, they're better, especially Herriot).

If
you're looking for gardening experiences and gardening philosopy read
Nollman's "Why We Garden" or books by Allen Lacey, Anne
Raver, or Joyce Mcgreevey -- all of them built gardens in rural or
semi-rural areas.




Rating:
Summary: This is not a book about gardening....
Review: Laura Shaine Cunningham, a Jewish orphan, grows up in New York City
with two eccentric uncles. All her young life, Laura pines for a place
in the country. Finally, as a successful writer she manages to fulfill
her dream of owing an "estate" outside the city. Like most
transplants from the city to the countryside, Ms. Cunningham spends a
great deal of time lamenting the encroaching population growth that
threatens to overwhelm her bit of paradise.

I enjoyed this book
until Ms. Cunningham achieved her goal owning a bit of former
farmstead. The early episodes involving her life with family members
in New York City are extremely funny. After she moves away from the
city and her family, her book reads like every other BOBO story -- got
educated, got a career, got married, made money, bought a house, had
kids. True, she does adopt two foreign-born children, and she does
eventually break up with her spouse, but these incidents are not fully
developed, and seem like tacked on bits to enlarge the book.

I liked
Ms. Cunningham's writing enough to read other books, and I think for a
start I'll find the one she wrote abouther life with her two eccentric
uncles. Her writing is much better when it's original and involves her
take on her own unique experiences as a child. Her country life reads
like a watered down version of a cross beteen James Herriot and Beverly
Nichols (read their books, they're better, especially Herriot).

If
you're looking for gardening experiences and gardening philosopy read
Nollman's "Why We Garden" or books by Allen Lacey, Anne
Raver, or Joyce Mcgreevey -- all of them built gardens in rural or
semi-rural areas.




Rating:
Summary: a place on my shelf forever.
Review: Not Tuscany, nor Provence. This book is not much of anything. It's fluffy and light and if you like to read books that don't make you think too much, or sound more like an article for the "women's" section of the newspaper, then this is the book for you. The author has her moments, but unfortunately they are too few and too far apart. Check the book out of the library, don't buy it.

As for me, give me books about Tuscany any day. At least they contain descriptions of local spots of interest I can visit.