This 2008 digital edition of Frankl's 1945 book is a must read for every human being who wants to lift their spirit in moments of despair.
The book is structured in three different parts. The first one (Experiences in a Concentration Camp) and the Postscript (The case for a Tragic Optimism) fit beautifully together, and are the basis of Frankl's philosophy and psychotherapy system called Logotherapy. They are narrated in a very conversational way because they are, after all, a memoir. They differ greatly in style and tone from the second part (Logotherapy in a Nutshell), which is a summary of Frankl's therapy system, partially based on Frankl's experiences and observations as Auschwitz inmate, and partially on techniques and views of the world that he had started elaborating before he was sent to the concentration camp. This part is drier in style, way more technical and not as approachable for the reader, unless the reader is really into therapy or a therapist.
Harold Kushner's preface to this 2008 edition is a good summary of the book main points, while Frankl's preface to the 1992 edition summarizes well how the book and Logotherapy came to be.
The book has many pearls of wisdom, and is very uplifting despite the brutality of what we read. In all honesty, I already expected that when I picked up the book. Some prisoner's stories are utterly poetic despite their tragedy. I'm glad that those people's historical memoirs had been so beautifully preserved. On the other hand, this is a survivor's first-person narration of the events, so that allows for invaluable insights into the reality of the extermination camps and into the inmates' mental/emotional state and fortune.
Since we live in 2021 and we're pretty aware of the Nazis' atrocities against the Jews, most of the things that Frankl tells about his experience are somewhat lessened by the impact on the reader of dozens of documentaries and movies on WW2. It might have been chilling reading the book in the postwar era, when all the atrocities were still unfolding and the world came to realize what had really happened. What we didn't know before reading the book is that a new therapeutic model, Logotherapy, was greatly influenced by the Jew's suffering in Auschwitz, and that there is hope even in the biggest moments of despair.
For the rest, Frank's take on life is admirable and full of wisdom, whether you are into Logotherapy or not. I especially liked his comments on love, the youth and unemployment, as they are still, more than half a century later, valid.
LOGOTHERAPY, SOME CORE PRINCIPLES AND POINTS I LIKE
>
The great task for any person is to find meaning in his/her life.
Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: Work (doing something
significant), Love (caring for another person), and Courage in difficult
times.
> Suffering is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.
>
You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always
control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
> Logotherapy aims to curing the soul by leading it to find meaning in life.
> What matters is to make the best of any given situation.
> Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
> The aim of life is not to be happy as the seeking of happiness can increase someone's unhappiness.
> Suffering is unavoidable, is part of life, and we need to accept it and re-frame it.
> Tragic optimism, i.e., one remains optimistic in spite of the “tragic triad, or those aspects of human existence
which may be circumscribed by: (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death and that we should say 'yes' to life in spite of all that.
> We may also find meaning in life even when
confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be
changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human
potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a
triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are
no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease
such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves. (p.
116).
> To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
> Success cannot be pursued but it is an end result that the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a
cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a
person other than oneself.
>
“Unemployment neurosis” originated in a twofold erroneous identification: being jobless was
equated with being useless, and being useless was equated with having a
meaningless life.
> Depression, aggression, and addiction in young people are due to what is
called in logotherapy “the existential vacuum,” a feeling of emptiness
and meaninglessness.
>
But even if each and every case of suicide had not been undertaken out
of a feeling of meaninglessness, it may well be that an individual’s
impulse to take his life would have been overcome had he been aware of
some meaning and purpose worth living for.(p. 143).
SOME CRITIQUE
Frankl poignantly mentions that despite all the inmates being subject to the harsh situations (food and sleep deprivation, hard-work labor, extreme cold, beatings, etc.) some died and some survived, and he ways that, many of those who died did so because they gave up on life and lose hope in getting alive out of the camps and resuming their lives after the war.
I love most of what Frankl says and his attitude towards life. However, we cannot say that Frankl survived just because he had a specific mindset, hopes of getting alive, finding his family and publishing the basics of Logotherapy included in this edition, which he had already started writing before being taken to the camp. First of all, he was an intellectual and a psychiatrist, i.e. a person with a strong mind, mentally stable with enough intellectual harnesses to re-frame anything in his head to give it meaning. He certainly was an optimistic, like it's in his nature. Not everyone was so well equipped mentally and emotionally. What's more, there must have been other people who, like him, had hopes of surviving, seeing their families and doing something with their lives in the outside world, but they never made it because, I can only hypothesize, their physique and immune system, as well as their mental state weren't Frankl's.
MIND
This edition published in 2008 by Rider, but digitally in 2013. Published in 2004 in Great Britain by Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing. A Random House Group company First published in German in 1946 under the title Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager Original English title was From Death-Camp to Existentialism.
7/10
Everything is Teeth is a memoir of childhood that narrates Evie's fearful obsession and fascination with sharks during her summer holidays in Australia.
Sweet and gory at equal doses, the story transported me to the fears and monsters of my own childhood. In a way, this memoir is also a horror story as Evie had a powerful imagination and a special liking for the gory details of shark attacks.
We see a bit of Evie's adulthood, life goes on, she gets older, her family does too. I found this part beautifully captured on paper, but also a bit hurried; I kept wondering, does she still go to Australia? Does she still have a fear or not? How did her fascination with sharks evolved?
Jose Sumner does a terrific job at conveying Evie's memoir with originality and versatility, using different techniques, styles and colour schemes. Most of the book is drawn in a very sweet mix of black, white and vanilla hues, but Evie's imagination and thoughts are drawn in black, grey and mauve, while the shark attacks are depicted with almost realism in full splendour and plenty of red.
This is an original lovely graphic memoir, and really enjoyed it. I think it is good for teens and adults, and children not so much, but perhaps under parental supervision.
I read this book in the hard copy version. It is quite large in size, very well bound, so one can open it in full without difficulty, and the paper is really thick and strong. A great edition.
Darkroom is not your usual graphic memoir.
Despite the author being a female, Quintero's Memoir is not the usual female memoir in vogue. I have read a good deal of graphic novels by female artists and, most of them, seem to share common themes: sexual identity, troubled childhood, Mental or psychological problems, love and relationships, or women issues in general. Quintero's Memoir in that regard is a different league. Dark Room connects more with a group of graphic memoirs coming from artists who immigrated into the USA and tell their story of struggle or just their experiences adjusting to the new culture and country. Quintero's Memoir relates to those, but the fact that she comes from a well adjusted family with no neurosis or mental problems, and Racial Segregation forms a good deal of the Memoir puts it on a different league as well.
Quintero's Memoir deals with immigration, race, social upheaval and identity. Not white, neither black, the Quinteros arrived from Argentina in 1961 and settled in the Alabama Black Belt area, in a time when segregation and Civil Rights libertarians were going to change the course of History in America. Lila and her family view and dealt with Segregation in a way that was not what it was expected from them, but they could not but be appalled by the reality of Segregation and life conditions of Afro-Americans, and they indeed were supportive of the Civil Rights movement.
Dark Room is both a personal and family memoir. It is also a memoir
about the troubles of immigration, of being always The Other. The book
it is perfect to illustrate Alterity processes. In a way, it is just
normal that the Quinteros would see "the others" in American society,
the Afro-Americans, with empathy and humanness and with empathic eyes. They themselves were
"the others" to both white and black people. This gave them an unique
vantage point, and also created trouble for them in their personal
relationships. I also like the fact that we witness the different
fortunes of the Quintero's siblings, as immigration affects differently
to the members of the same family because people are, after all,
individuals.
Dark Memoir is a lovely Memoir that goes from the
personal to the familiar, stopping at the historical. Quintero herself
reveals that memory is not the only source of her Memoir, as an
historical approach is given to the narration of some of the horrific
events happened in Alabama during the 1960s. Moreover, she was
academically advised and supervised to produce a Memoir that is clear
about the value of our personal memory in a Memoir, especially when
dealing with historical events. I think that shows. There is some sort
of detachment in the narration at times, that comes from a sound approach to the genre.
Despite being barely present, Argentina is never forgotten, especially because Lila's mother would recall her beloved Buenos Aires and infuse their American children with a taste for their country of origin. Argentina or Argentinean culture were not imposed on the children, and Lila has ended being very much in touch with her Argentinean family and keeping Argentina culture close to her heart even though she progressively assimilated into America.
Beyond the narrative, the book is wonderfully drawn, with a precise use
of ink pen drawing, a great use of chiaroscuro and portrait, and an
elegant use of white space. The number of vignettes per page is small,
favouring big sized detailed ones, sometimes with barely any text; other times the narration and text is the focus and just a few elements of drawing are present in the page. Generally speaking, the book is visually interesting and varied. This being the case, the book reads quickly, and feels
shorter than the 200+ pages that the book has. In fact, was about 60 of the
book inn my Kindle and the book was already finished, just the long heart-felt
acknowledgements at the end of the book occupying the rest of the book.
What the heck?!
Alone Forever is a short book containing a selection of auto-biographic self-deprecating comic strips by Liz Prince about her dating life, or lack of, and how she is, lives and relates to people, men (and cats) in general.
Liz is a bit of tomboy in ways of relating, always hanging out with boys, and dresses very boyishly. Despite being taken for a lesbian often, she is very much straight and looking for love. She is a bit neurotic, vengeful, confused, loving, loyal, funny, nerdy, and magnetically attracted to cute bearded guys wearing strange bands T-shirts. The comic strips depict how she relates to the opposite sex, how she flirts, and how she dates. My favourite pages are those devoted to the narration of the dates she got with guys she met through the dating site OK Cupid.
The drawing style is a bit sketchy, even childish, very charming, very e-zine in a way. Still, some of her images are really beautiful and great.The strips are very short, the longest occupies a page, so the degree in which they engage the reader varies. I found myself reading out loud at some of the strips, or just feeling in love with the version of Liz that Liz has created for the reader.
I recently read Jeff Brown's "Clumsy", and I found that Liz's and Jeff's have very similar books and ways of narrating. Although they are the flip side of the coin and of each other, they share the fact that they are not archetypal man and woman in their romantic relationships.
This is a very entertaining and engaging book, and I
read it in a sitting. Once ends loving Liz and wishing her lots of love!
This is the first book by Brown I read, and the first book in the "Girlfriends Trilogy".
Clumsy is a glimpsed window to Brown's personal love life and her long-distance relationship with Theresa. A memoir structured in short episodes of his daily life that tell us about meeting, dating and falling in love with Theresa, but also the day to day elements that make a relationship grow despite how mundane: from hugging, to farting, sex tons of sex, condoms, insecurities, discussions, moments of indescribable happiness and others of tension. Life as you live it when you relate to somebody. A depiction of intimacy in its beauty and rawness.
Brown is good at telling a story with honesty and in a way that appeals to the reader disregarding the gender. Being a woman, I especially appreciate how Brown tells his love story, so very different from any woman's way of telling it and living it. I am sure that if Theresa had written or drawn her version, the tone of the story, the elements and moments selected would have been very different. The book, for obvious reasons, is appealing to men, especially those who, like Brown, are a bit clumsy, weird, sensitive and a bit needy, the post-modern male if you want.
However, what makes the book appealing is not only the approach to the memoir genre, and the way the story is built by decomposing it in micro-pieces, but also the fact that Brown puts his heart in there. The result is a very charming naughty and tender love story.
Visually speaking, the book is drawn in a "rudimentary" sort of style. Like a comic strip in a newspaper. The pages are filled with six vignettes, drawn in a clear black and white, with lots of white space, very clean and clear, with little elements of distraction. Despite the simplicity and the lack of shadow work, the images are very well composed and framed, and Brown does a terrific job at creating complex expressive intimate images with very few strokes. I especially love his use of horizontal and vertical lines to create perspective and depth in images that, otherwise, would be flat. I love the way he draws nudity, the way he depicts body hair, and the facial expression of the characters. All very cute.
I like the economy of Brown's text. Very effective, and right to the point. They perfectly complement his drawing style and his graphic narrative.
The book is for adults, adult themes, sex, nudity and all the goodies that we want to find in comic and graphic goods. If you don't, well, back off.
I have to confess, that this book's cover is one of the most boring ugliest cover I have ever seen on any book. A major sin and put down, taking into account that the author is a graphic artist! Hellooooo.
Tales from Outer Suburbia is perhaps the most Australian of Tan's books, and definitely very Western Australian. Tan is native from the northern suburbs of Perth WA, and the landscapes, urban furniture and fauna he depicts are just part of Perth's visual idiosyncrasy.
This book is atypical, in two ways. Firstly, Tan, usually very concise in the wording of his books and in the use of words in them, writes a lot in here, and the text is as important as the images. This is so, because this is a semi-memoir of Tan's childhood, and the stories part of his emotional memory growing up in Perth. Secondly, visually speaking, this book is eclectic in styles, because he he uses very different illustration and painting techniques and styles to accompany the different stories, which remind the reader of the ones used in his previous books. In that regard, the book is less congruent visually than his previous ones.
What is still typical of Tan is his mastery at drawing, its ability to create magic realism from the quotidian, to create visually appealing almost-touchable images, absurd meaningful scenes, and quirky funny adorable characters. I love the way he uses his images to create mock newspapers news, mock Post envelopes, mock wall-collages, how he incorporate the credits and acknowledgements in a borrowing slip library card or an envelop, his mock postage stamps, the quirky funny magical sketches that cover the inner front and back covers of the book.
Some of his usual themes are also here, especially the concepts of
foreign (how foreigners see us, how we see foreigners, what foreign is)
and of how our childhood memories never fade out in our hearts, no
matter how mundane they were, because the way we lived and perceived
them.
The stories or chapters in the book are:
>> The Water Buffalo.
>> Eric (this is one of my favourite in drawing style and message -very similar to the Arrival- and because Eric is just the bomb!)
>> Broken Toys.
>> Undertow.
>> Grandpa's Story (Another favourite because of the narrative, and how Tan turns a real story into something really magical).
>> The other country (Because it depicts his contact with the Mediterranean culture and the magic in it. The painting is also very Mediterranean!)
>> Stick Figures (I love the visuals of this one because it depicts Perth summer landscape very well).
>> The Nameless Holiday.
>> Alert but not alarmed
>> Wake.
>> Make your Own Pet.
>> Our Expedition.
>> Night of the Turtle Rescue
To be honest, every story is wonderful.
This is a melancholic book about Tan's emotional landscapes, so it has to be read as such.
Are you my Mother? is the most intellectually engaging comic book I have ever read, and I have read plenty! I came to this book because the author's name is in my list of "must" female graphic artists, and I am not disappointed. There are many reasons, beyond the undeniable quality of the book at both narrative and graphic levels, I was thrilled to find some of my favourite reading interests being part of the narrative (psychology, psychoanalysis, mental disorders) and some of my life practices reflected as well (dreamwork and metaconciousness), while a friend of mine is very interested in the Mother Archetype (and I even had a synchronicity event with her while reading this book).
Are you my Mother? is Bechdel's quest to understand the relationship she has with her mother from childhood to the present time and see how their relationship shaped her psyche an who she is. It sounds a bit boring, but it is not!
The book is a wide open window to Bechdel's mind and heart, and to the way she lives and sees the world. She does not censor herself to be liked, so her opinions about the world, life or other artists, her family, her mother, her girlfriend/s and herself are sincere and believable. We also see her displaying her neurosis, depression, her obsessions and compulsions. Bechdel has a sharp-razor mind that understands complexity with easiness and sometimes she thinks the reader will to. I don't think is always the case, but she does not debase herself to the level of the mainstream reader because that is not who she is. A killer combination of elements that will get any person interested. There is no fluff in this book, but you will find moments of tenderness, passion, fun, sadness, doubt, confusion and raw honesty, all of them infused in the hiper-metaconsciousness Bechdel swims daily to sort out her personal and creative life.
The book has a Matryoshka doll sort of feeling as it is organically multi-layered and cohesive in its graphic and literary narrative, and one layer covers another, which, at its turn, covers another, despite all being a perfectly organic set. This a very Magritte-ish book as well, both in the imagery (See, f. e. pages 212 or 252) and its structure. So we see her writing the book about her father, while she is interacting with her mother, creating the book about her mother, thinking about the book about her mother, seeing herself doing so, at the same time. Almost an out of the body experience. The chapter on mirrors is perhaps the clearest example of this Magritte's man painting himself while paints himself while paints himself. Extremely cool.
Graphically speaking, Bechdel is amazing. Her drawings are realistic, very expressive and multifaceted, very attentive to the detail (from the facial micro-expressions to the details on the floor or walls, everything!) but also very dynamic. Her approach to this graphic novel is also very photographic and cinematic, and reminds me of a pre-movie visual-rendering of a script, because her drawings are not only fabulous per se, they are fabulously composed and framed: eagle-view scenes, scenes from the street into a room, scenes with the self as object (shots of her feet, reflections on a mirror or train window), voyeuristic (sex scenes). Moreover, she inserts and reproduces with her own handwriting personal (past and present) letters by her, her mother and her father, pages of newspapers, highlights from the books she is reading, clipped photos and quotes, mock-flashback images about her mother's childhood, Winnicott and Wolf's lives, and what it is not. Just awesome. They create texture, they create life on a paper and visually engage and enthral the reader.
Everything looks and flows so easily that one forgets that it is masterful. You have to stop and say wow to yourself, because this girl has an extraordinary talent. I found so many wow pages and vignettes! Just one example, pages 103-105 and how she depicts the pass of time, so beautifully simple and effective.
Having said the above, this is a complex book, divided in chapters that start with the depiction of one of her dreams, and dive into especial facets of the relationship mother-daughter from a psychoanalytic point of view. She starts with Freud and Jung readings but ends devoting her attention to the work of Donald Winnicott, whose life and writings on mother-child bonding click more with her. She also sees some parallels between Winnicott's theories, Virginia Wolf's writings (the Lighthouse especially) and her own life. Bechdel plays dream analyst and psychoanalyst with herself, and she is the object and the subject of her book. There are nudity, sex scenes and adult themes in the book, so this is not a graphic book for a lazy reader or for children.
I don't like the hue of red used in the normal pages of the book. I would have rather had all in black or white or work on another hues. I found that the textures of the colour could have been better, but this me being fussy!
Lena Finkle's is the semi-autobiographic novel of writer and graphic artist Anya Ulinich.A priori, the story of a divorced mother of two, late 30s, coming back into the dating world sounds too mundane or uncool to be the subject of a graphic novel. However, Ulinich's alter ego Lena Finkle is not your usual woman. It is Ulinich's multifaceted personality and self, her honesty about who she is, and the way she narrates the story what makes the book the interesting entertaining story it is.
The book is engaging and entertaining. This is a book for adults as there are nudity, sex scenes and adult themes in it. The story is far from linear because Lena's adventures in dating, which are pathetic-kinda-funny and very entertaining for the reader, are accompanied by flashbacks of her past childhood and teens ages in Russia and her first years as immigrant in America, conversations with her mother, best friends and lovers.
Ulinich is both a graphic artist and a writer, so this novel is as much visual as it is readable, with much more words than more graphic novels. I found fascinating the way she incorporates long two-people conversations into an image (even with her alternative thoughts while talking!), with a sort of puzzle-ish composite of bubbles that adjust cosily to each other.
Regarding the illustration system, Ulinich alternates very realistic virtuoso drawing with childish caricature-ish drawing when she speaks of her childhood and teens in Russia. I love the graphic depiction of her anxiety after the final episode with The Orphan, which is just brilliant.
Ulinich is very honest about who she is, how she feels, and how she approaches reality, relationships, love, sex, immigration, gender roles, and Jewish and national identity. She is also honest about her image. She does not beautify herself in the book. She draws herself a bit fatty and ugly at times, with dark circles under her eyes! Ulinich even shares her own bullxt. The little "mini-Lena", a sort of evil on her shoulder, appears when Lena is fooling herself or fooling others, ignoring things she should not, or just to remind herself to follow common sense.
I confess that I expected a closure at the end of the book. However, life is not always a novel or has a happy ending, or has an ending, as living is a process. We don't know what happens to Lena, but we somewhat intuit that she is ready for something good because we see her change and evolve into a more mature woman throughout the book.
I would love a follow up graphic novel!
This is a remarkable honest graphic memoir by graphic artist Ellen Forney. With Marbles we are given a free ticket, no restrictions, to Forney's life. We witness her sexual innuendos, mental states, family and friends relationships, and intellectual queries. We become part of her psychiatric treatment, mood swings, professional work, medication adjustments and side effects, and ways of coping with being a bipolar in the real world.
I found amazing how Forney is able to convey to the non-bipolar reader, or to anybody for that matter, how it felt in her head to be bipolar, which sort of images, mental pressure and mood state she had to endure. She is also brilliant, and very didactic, at translating scientific and pharmaceutical facts into easy to understand images. See, the effects on medications (pp. 182-185) or when are emotions out of control? (p. 15), just to mention two examples.
The illustration style changes depending on what she is narrating: it is vignetted with a predominance of black over white, and a bit chunky in style, when she narrates her visits to the psychiatrist, and some of the events happening in her daily and family life. On the contrary, the style changes dramatically, is freer, more fluid, expressive and creative, less "blocky", with a predominance of white over black, when she moves from the world out there to the world inside her. There also some pages where the text (no image) is the illustration. She also reproduces some of the images from her personal sketch notebook, in which she painted her self-portrait in depressive phases, which are very artistic, and very different from the rest. Forney is truly versatile.
The memoir is not only engaging and entertaining (I read it in a seating), but it is also full of good practical knowledge about bipolar disorder: what bipolar disorder is, different sub-types, treatment and medication applied, the effect on your brain and mood, Cognitive Behavioural Techniques, bibliography, the social stigma among other things.
Perhaps the most interesting part of her journey is related to her query about who she stands as an artist, whether her brilliance is due to the highs of her bipolar disorder, or not. She asks herself, "are bipolar disorder and creativity actually linked?", or "If I take meds to prevent my mood swings, am I choosing to be less creative?", and gives an honest answer - her answer. She examines the lives of man famous bipolar painters and writers to see if there was a connection between their work and their malaise, as well..
Calling Dr Laura is a raw and honest memoir of graphic artist Nicole J. Georges from her childhood to this day and her life in Portland Oregon. The novel focus on her search for her natural father, her coming out of the closet as a queer, and the process of finding who she is as a person. The book has a good deal of her childhood memories and family related issues, which are not adorned or sweetened, but presented in a very naive straight forward way. She could have demonized her mother for the whole story related to her natural father, but she does not. She does not hide anything bad about her life, experiences or people she comes across, but she does not judge them and focuses more on how she felt or feels. How difficult to do and so well done! The narrative alternates the present with episodes of her childhood. The parts about her childhood are really wonderful but also a bit sad.
The reading is very engaging. That is so because the book is well paced regarding the subjects she presents and how she presents them, the u-turns she does but still coming back to the main road, so to speak. The story is never bland or boring. Although the mystery in the novel is resolved in the epilogue, it lingers throughout the whole book without being overpowering.
I liked Georges' style and versatility to use different graphic languages and even fonts to convey meaning and create atmosphere. Although most of the book is set in interiors, I love her road and urban landscapes. The drawings of her childhood episodes, which are very child-like, are just lovable, and very different from the more elaborate and arty ones done for the present day narration. I think this is one of those books that would be been great in colour, as the book cover image is.
My favourite scenes are her story of her intestinal problems when she was a kid, the one of the boat when Radar dumps Nickie, and Nickie's fight with her mother in the car about she being a selfish brat. I also love the dog's language balloons she adds when she communicates with her dogs or they don't know what is happening - very cute.
My main complaint about the book is not the book, it is its rendering for Kindle format. I have read the book with a magnifying glass(no kidding) because the pages are fixed in size, so one cannot enlarge them. Vignettes can be individuated by double clicking, but the zooming is minimal. Amazon should be doing something about these issues because they affect the reading and enjoyment of this and other books and we are paying full price for them.
Hurry Down Sunshine is the true story of Michael Greenberg's family when his teenager daughter started to have mental problems and especially after she was interned in a psychiatric isolation ward.
This could have been one of those soapy self-pity sympathy-seeking books that one find everywhere, but it is not. This is a raw memoir that reflects on how mental illness affects everybody (the sick, their families, their entourage and the health professionals) without adornment but elegance.
Greenberg portrays the reality of madness masterfully. He shows an extreme sensitivity and empathy towards all parts involved, without hiding the contradictory feelings that such situations brought to his life. He is able to make us feel the pain, despair, impotence and heartbreak that he found at being unable to deal with the problems that his daughter brought to life, but also the strength, hopes, awareness and depth of feelings that they came with.
This is the best Memoir I have ever written regarding the literary qualities of the writing. The book is superbly written (after all Greenberg is a reputed translator and writer), his English is refined and precise, and his narrative and composition clear, engaging, fresh and profound.
I read this book a few years ago, and it is still in my memory. It is just a great book.
I got this book in a bookshop in Japan, having never heard of Mineko Iwasaki's story before, after having chased down Geishas in Tokyo and Kyoto, and having always being fascinated by their refinement.
The book is a Memoir, lets remember that. It is an honest memoir, though. Mineko Iwasaki tells us her story the way she lived it but without masking her self, her opinions or way of being, without artificially sweetening anything, not even herself. She does not pretend to be better than she is, and shows her strong character and temper; in fact, she does not hold her tongue when expressing her opinions on some famous Western people who visited her. One has to admire her for being so frank. However, what the reader will find more fascinating is the world she describes: the world of a high-end Geisha, of which she was part of from a very early age. Through her memoir, we learn what Geishas are, how they are educated and instructed, the values they stand for, the ways they act, the pass-over ceremonies and rituals, the difficulties and personal relationships, and the nitty-gritty of selling their services.
This Memoir was written as a Mineko's reaction to the publication of Memoirs of a Geisha. Mineko had been been the main informant, revealing some secret information under the promise of her name being never revealed. When the novel came out, her name was mentioned, and many facts related to the Geisha life were just distorted and changed. Mineko's reputation was damaged. She decided to write her memoir, and the real story, the way she had lived it.
Mineko tells us her story from her introduction into a Geisha house when she was still a kid and until her retirement. The world that Mineko describes is just amazing.
I found the book really fascinating and absorbing. The book is simply written, so it is not a literary delicacy, but it is an unforgettable memoir.
I rarely buy or own non-digital books any more. This book was recommended to me in a way that I felt I had to have it in my hands to physically squeeze it. I couldn't resist the cover, that was a decisive yes-buy-it moment - most of my "judge the book by its cover" moments actually work for me.
I am glad that I did because no digital edition would make merit to a book that is sensorial and sensually enjoyable. The texture of the paper, especially of those pages painted in colours, the brightness of the colours and the smell of the pages are invigorating, inspirational and even evanescent. The font is a handwriting sort of font, not the usual printing ones, and the book is full of little funny drawings and sketches made by the author - like a children book for adult women.
The book is structured in different areas of interest, as a personal diary that Sark shares with the reader. All the themes and subjects are very much ingrained into the female psyche and femininity for different reasons (genetic, cultural, social, religious, whatever). Some of the subjects are universal worries, fears or thoughts that most woman have, will have or have had. Despite the lightness and humour of the writing, there is a lot of wisdom, compassion, daring, aha! moments, and, in my case, many moments of mirrored recognition in this book. Each chapter finishes with a list of recommended readings, and soundtracks that go well with the theme. The book has quotes scattered through it, but the ones I would quote come from Sark herself.
Despite being published first in 1977 (I've got the 1997 edition) the book is still so fresh that one cannot but splash oneself with its words and feel it smells of mangoes.
I recommend this book to any woman with W. out there, or any girl who wants to become a woman with W. Men are welcome as a "gifters" to their beloved women with a W.
I just love this book. I have always felt succulent, wild and womanly, but I thought that being too imperfect, too perfect, too matter of fact, too green, too ripe, too much of "me" was far from acceptable. It turns out that the succulence is in the "me", whohoo!, but also in the "we" of us the "xx" chromosomal human beings.
Just a wish - The bibliography at the end of each chapter could be easily updated, and the music tracks too.
Hyperbole and a Half is an hyper-real hyperbolic hyper-witty memoir by Allie Brosh, in which she narrates some episodes related to her childhood, her beloved dogs' behaviour and her adult self.
I loved this book. I was expecting it to be hilarious, as this seems to be the adjective that most people use to describe it. I have found it more witty than anything else, although, sometimes, I have caught myself laughing out loud. The book is a terrific reflection on human nature and on canine nature. My favourite episodes were depression-2, which is heart-breaking but very true, the God of Cake, Lost in the Woods (which can be read also metaphorically), and The Parrot. Personally, I feel connected and identified with some of the things she mentions in Thoughts and Feelings, and Identity 1 (I don't think it is unnecessarily self-deprecating, I think it reflects how must humans are, we are something, want to be another, we bulls*** ourselves, we believe what were are not, and, sometimes, like in Brosh's case, we are aware of it).
Brosh has an incredible talent to reflect on anything that is happening in her life with both sense of humour and depth. That is why she is able to connect with so many people about issues like identity or depression. I love that her dog love is not "smothering", and she treats and speaks of dogs as if they were... animals not just puppets or "kids"!
This is an illustrated graphic book, in which both the text and the vignettes are important. Sometimes the vignettes illustrate what the author says, in other occasions they add details or depth to the narration. The style of the illustration is voluntary childish regarding the drawing of the human characters, while her dogs and the backgrounds are detailed and well drawn. Sometimes, the same vignette serves to illustrate two different moments, with just the text added, while others it is repeated to show perplexity, and in others minor details are changed for effect. Each chapter has a a different background colour and text colour, which seems to fit the story perfectly, and it is beautiful.
Don't let yourself fool by the illustration style. The book is far from superficial. And it is a terrific memoir.
Posts
