Driving with Dvorak: Essays on Memory and Identity (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780803224766)

All our lives are made of moments, both simple and sublime, all of which in some way partake of the cultural moment. Fleda Brown is that rare writer who, in narrating the incidents and observations of her life, turns her story, by wit and insight and a poet's gift, into something more. This is an unconventional memoir. A series of lyrical essays about life in a maddeningly complex family during the even more maddeningly complex fifties and sixties, it adds up to one woman's story while simultaneously reflecting the story of her times. A strange and erratic father, a resigned and helpless mother, a mentally disabled brother, a sister with a brain tumor: folded into Brown's reflections are the intimacies and ambivalences of family and marriage, girlhood and adolescence, identity and self-knowledge. Whether reflecting on the automobile industry or a wrenching parting from beloved pets or the process of aging, Brown's telling rings with great humor, profound perception, and a lyricism that makes even the most commonplace moment uncommonly good reading.

Author: Fleda Brown
ISBN-10: 0803224761
ISBN-13: 9780803224766
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Language: English
Published: 03/01/2010
Pages: 284
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.64h x 5.78w x 0.99d

Review Citation(s):
Foreword 02/17/2011