RE: Glass Castle memoir + Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2605: bad sign

[carolkean]

Thank you - and thank you for this:

'How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.'

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How did I fall so far from the freewritehouse?
You - @owasco, @deirdyweirdy, @myjob, all of you - are THE BEST!!
Thank you for reading and commenting!

@owasco, no, I have not read HOUSEKEEPING, nor the memoir by another famously abused author, "Change Me into Zeus's Daughter: A Memoir" by Barbara Robinette Moss, and yes, I do remember reading that the first daughter of Rex and Mary Wall moved to NYC, followed by Jeanette, then the next sibling, and they rescued the little brother from the parents and raised him as well - and then the parents show up, wanting to move in with the kids, but then the parents end up homeless and dive in Dumpsters ...

Please do write again, @owasco. Why do you and I both find writing more arduous and less of a flow of thoughts and ideas than it once was...????

I seriously worry about dementia. Putting thoughts together, coherently, logically, is getting harder all the time. MUST KEEP WRITING to stave off #BrainRot, #dementia!!!!

So much catching up to do.....!!!!

Comments

[owasco]

Girl! I'm reading a book that you might like, "What Happened to Henry?" by Sharon Pywell. It starts off a bit sluggishly, then gets really good! Sharon was a friend of mine way back in the day, and she said she wanted to write The Great American Novel, along the lines of Bonfire of the Vanities. This is not quite that (thankfully) but it's very very good.

[carolkean]

Thanks for the recommendation. Just reading her blog and her bio at GoodReads, I love her!

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/133576.Sharon_Pywell/blog

Like other teachers, she finds:

.... students increasingly resist reading anything longer than a text. Of course this isn’t all students. But something’s changing. There’s a connection between this pattern and the current state of the Union: reading fiction develops the capacity to see contradiction, decode the implied, value the truth. Not reading does the opposite.
I have been confused by the increasing trouble my students have explaining what is truly going on in human interactions they find in fiction. How does this character feel? I may ask. “Good,” they’ll say. They ignore the fact that the character is lying and the preceding hundred pages made that clear. Lies, I have told my students, are the engines that drive the narrative arc upward to its crisis point ....

[owasco]

I think you will really like her writing style. She writes some bits in a Japanese mind, thoughts that are shared by an American mind, that are gorgeous. Lots of research had to have gone into that. Prescience, purgatory, religiousity or not. Now that I have told you this much, you really must read it.

[carolkean]

I'm starting Chapter 3 - THANK YOU for the recommendation. I love this author!
Her voice!
This little girl with all her questions. The awful nun. The martyred saint.
Bought the ebook yesterday and love love love it!

[owasco]

Oh good! I was pretty sure you would. The nun comes back from the dead! I ended up loving her. Spoiler! Sorry!

[carolkean]

I finished the book (last month!) and LOVED IT, despite the tragedies.
The nun, back from the dead.... now I have to go back and see what you meant by that.
The dad and his ham radio; our heroine's failure to master Morse Code; why didn't I write a review while all of this story was fresh in my mind.
THANK YOU SO MUCH for the recommendation. The "voice," the themes, the family drama, everything about this story is right up my alley.

Others might complain of a slow pace - not me.

And you know the author in real life! Please tell her she has a new fan!

[owasco]

I knew her in real life. Haven't seen or talked to Sharon for more than 30 years. I remembered her name and that she had hoped to write a Great American Novel, and looked her up. I am so glad you enjoyed it! You and I both like stories that are on the edge of magical realism. I like when they go all in, too.

I've recommended this one to a lot of people, but you're the first to have read it. I should have known you would be!

What is going on in your life? I'm busy in my tiny garden, and learning homeopathy, which has turned out to be wonderful. It's a whole new medical world. Love it!