The Memoir Club
- Book Review,
by Laura Kalpakian
From Publishers Weekly
"The memoir is... literary shape that you give to the past," but how might an understanding of past events shape the future? Kalpakian (Educating Waverly; Graced Land) explores this question in her 12th novel, in which six women enrolled in a university extension class on the memoir grapple with their personal histories. When the class ends, these memoirists, who vary in age, financial status and life experience, continue to meet once a week to explore their pasts and discover each other. Alternating chapters focus on each of the women in turn, and Kalpakian expertly reveals them as distinct, believable individuals: Rusty, still mourning the newborn daughter she gave up some 30 years ago; Francine, the devoted widow of a brilliant man whom she learns hid a devastating secret from her; Sarah Jane, an author and child of the Depression; adopted Jill, who yearns to understand her Korean roots; Caryn, a doctor flailing in a sea of grief since a terrible tragedy; and her strong best friend, Nell, who has kept her afloat. As compelling as each woman is, Caryn and Nell are clearly the stars, and their intense friendship forms the core of the story. As lives intertwine and unlikely kinships are formed, the members turn to each other when tragedy strikes one of their own. That tragedy is an unnecessary and unfortunate plot twist, and the conclusion is too tidy. But the moral of the story remains clear: we all have a story to tell - of loss, regret and yearning - and in telling it, we are all connected.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
This ninth novel, following Educating Waverly [BKL Ap 1 02], from the talented Kalpakian is so entertaining that readers will be blindsided by its emotional depth. Using the tried-and-true format of following diverse women brought together through an artificially imposed plot device--in this case, a memoir-writing class--the author tweaks her conventional material in any number of interesting ways. Shifting perspectives provide the back stories: a doctor grieving the loss of her husband and children to a plane crash, an adopted Korean businesswoman searching for her true identity, an upper-class suburbanite manically devoted to a husband who led a double life, etc., etc. As they grapple with elemental everywoman conflicts, excerpts from their memoirs add depth and salient details. Each woman eventually comes into clear focus through a combination of dialogue, straight narrative, and their individual writing styles. Although Kalpakian overreaches in places, by the time the women all come together in a triumphant final scene, in which past fears are forever vanquished, there won't be a dry eye in the house. A natural for book clubs. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"When you read Laura Kalpakian, you are in the capable and tender hands of a master, and The Memoir Club is proof of her well-honed craft. It is a feat of brilliant execution, with multilayered plots like those of our real lives, and with characters who captivated me with their pasts and presents, as if we were all spellbound in my own living room. The truth-- it is a remarkable novel".
-Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon
"Laura Kalpakian has a craft, a magic like no other writer. She wends her thoughtful, inspired narratives, her richly created characters, her genuine and alive dialogue into a reader's soul with such skill, taking you by surprise - sometimes with an entire paragraph, sometimes with a simple sentence. I have never been disappointed by anything Laura Kalpakian has written - far from it: my reader's blood races when I hear she has something new for me."
- Alaine Borgias, Village Books, Bellingham, WA
"Beautifully written, intensely interesting and absorbing, Laura Kalpakian masterminds her material with triumphant ease and sympathy."
- Elizabeth Buchan, author of A Perfect Love
"This ninth novel from the talented Laura Kalpakian is so entertaining that readers will be blindsided by its emotional depth....By the time the women all come together in a triumphant final scene, there won't be a dry eye in the house. A natural for bookclubs."
- Booklist
"Laura Kalpakian is an author to love. Not many fiction writers are as fearless as she is...[The Memoir Club is a ] complex, moving novel...What Kalpakian digs up here is literary gold, a novel to warm your heart. Her characters are her strength, and these are some of her best."
- The Bellingham Herald
"Kalpakian has delivered a finely crafted story..."
- The Seattle Times-Post Intelligencer
"[Kalpakian] deals thoughtfully with some sensitive subjects...The Memoir Club is a finely constructed story."
- The Boston Globe
"Kalpakian artfully streams a swirl of engaging subplots through the reader's imagination...good old-fashioned storytelling...The Memoir Club is entertaining and memorable."
- The Olympian (Olympia, WA)
"Kalpakian has hit upon a terrific narrative device. She handles the women's different voices with assurance, and weaves them together to reveal surprising parallels and complementary patterns.... Good old-fashioned storytelling with likable characters grappling with the sorts of issues and regrets we all recognize. The Memoir Club is entertaining and memorable."
- Bremerton Sun
Review
"When you read Laura Kalpakian, you are in the capable and tender hands of a master, and The Memoir Club is proof of her well-honed craft. It is a feat of brilliant execution, with multilayered plots like those of our real lives, and with characters who captivated me with their pasts and presents, as if we were all spellbound in my own living room. The truth-- it is a remarkable novel".
-Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon
Book Description
Six women, each with her own misgivings, take a university Extension night class in Writing Your Memoir, looking only for a little bibliotherapy. The following semester, they meet privately; the memoir class becomes the Memoir Club. In coming to terms with their losses, with their own guilt - in writing to break through that stubborn, opaque barrier to the past - they forge a new present. And a new future. Their teacher, the enigmatic Penny Taylor, steps in at the right moment and steps out before her students can thank her.
In the beginning, grief-stricken Dr. Caryn Henley only goes to the class at the insistence of her longtime friend, Nell, a woman so loyal that behind her back people call her "the St. Bernard." Rusty Meadows wants to write a memoir for a daughter she gave up at birth. Mrs. Francine Hellman wants her memoir to laud her late husband, the scientist Dr. Marcus Hellman, only to find he had a past unknown to her. The elderly, unconventional Sarah Jane Perkins writes to come to terms with the cruelties her rigid mother inflicted on her artistic, bootlegging father. And Korean-born Jill McDougall comes to the memoir class to find out who she is, and why she's living in a warehouse with a man who loves ice cream. These students of the memoir achieve what they set out to do, but discover what they never expected. Then an act of violence alters their lives forever.
From the Inside Flap
"In a memoir, the author and the narrator have an uneasy relationship. What does the reader know of the author? That the author lived to tell the tale. What does the reader know of the narrator? That the tale needed to be told."
Six women, each with her own misgivings, take a university extension night class in Writing Your Memoir, looking only for a little bibliotherapy. The following semester, they meet privately at the gracious home of one of the participants. The memoir class becomes the memoir club.
In coming to terms with their losses, with their own guilt-in writing to break through that stubborn, opaque barrier to the past-they forge a new present. And a new future. The teacher, the enigmatic Penny Taylor, steps in at the right moment and steps out before her students can thank her.
In the beginning, grief-stricken Dr. Caryn Henley only goes to the class at the insistence of her longtime friend and colleague, Nell, a woman so loyal that behind her back people call her the St. Bernard. Rusty Meadows wants to write a memoir for her daughter she gave up at birth. Mrs. Francine Hellman wants her memoir to laud her late husband, the scientist Dr. Marcus Hellman, only to find he had a past unknown to her. The elderly, unconventional Sarah Jane Perkins writes to come to terms with the cruelties her rigid mother inflicted on her artistic, bootlegging father. And Korean born Jill McDougall comes to the memoir class to find out who she is, and why she's living in a warehouse with a man who loves ice cream. These students of the memoir achieve what they set out to do, but discover what they never expected.
Along the way, the disparate women come together, reveal themselves to each other and support each other. As they render their pasts in memoirs, they forge a new present and a new future.
From the Back Cover
PRAISE FOR LAURA KALPAKIAN:
"Whatever happened to old-fashioned stories, with fleshed-out characters, well-crafted plots, strong themes and palpable atmosphere? Laura Kalpakian, for one, still is writing them."
-Wall Street Journal
"Kalpakian creates inspiring, thought-provoking, even bewitching characters."
-Baltimore Sun
[Kalpakian] is so entertaining a writer that it takes a while to realize how smart she is. . . . Generous, gritty, sexy, full of lyrical musings, and funny as all get-out."
-The New Yorker
". . . . Kalpakian writes with a verve that leaves you laughing and contemplating your own ideas of family."
-Chicago Tribune
"Kalpakian [is] at her best-earthy, magical, compassionate, and inventive to the last detail."
-Washington Post
"Kalpakian's observations are sharp, her humor is sweet."
-London Observer
"Kalpakian is an extraordinarily talented writer with an almost intimidating understanding."
-James DeRossitt, Memphis Commercial Appeal
About the Author
Laura Kalpakian is an award-winning novelist who has received a National Endowment of the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and the PEN/West Award for Best Short Fiction. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
PART 1
Preservation and Invention
CHAPTER ONE
The St. Bernard
Our annual picnics look like any other. A little early in the season, perhaps. The ground is often spongy and the trees reluctantly budding, but if the weather's at all decent, we gather in the park, the picnic tables down by the lake. We have the red-checked tablecloths, the plastic coolers, the potluck tubs of coleslaw and potato salad, the little grill for hot dogs. The kids bring dogs and Frisbees. Maybe even a ball, a football often, though it's April and most people haven't yet unpacked their picnic baskets after Portland's long, wet winter. The park is pretty empty, and down at the lake, the ducks are not yet overfed and a filthy menace. (That's the nurse in me talking; can't be helped, hygiene, hand-washing fanatic, that's me.) But really, you would not have guessed that we all convene to commemorate a tragedy. We started out that brutal day five years ago, staring at one another, strangers newly endowed with our collective, our terrible title, the Families of the Victims. Slowly, we have become survivors. Most. Not all. Some have died. Some by their own hand. Some cannot bear the sight of the rest of us. But for those of us who live here in Portland, we find a bit of strength in numbers.
We keep it low-key. No grandstanding speeches. From the beginning, the first anniversary, everyone had enough sense to stay clear of that. Words would not bring back the dead. Often there's a priest and rabbi, prayers before we part. But you probably couldn't tell that this was a gathering of people who five years before had no connection whatever. Then, suddenly, we faced one another in an airport lounge that cordoned us off from people who had not suffered what we had suffered. All our lives were suddenly thrust into one another, rammed into each other as the plane had slammed into the sea.
From a distance people wave to Caryn and me as we get out of the car. We are a sort of duet. We have the same short hair, light brown, nondescript, no-fuss haircuts, and we have the athlete's springy walk. Instinct and training combined, I guess. Except that Caryn is blue eyed, broad shouldered, and long legged, and I still have a goalie's body. Big Nell they used to call me in college. Respectfully. Women's soccer MVP. Women's soccer was my ticket, all right. How else does a Polish-Irish girl from Gary, Indiana, get into Notre Dame where she meets the likes of Caryn Henley from Grosse Pointe? I put our macaroni salad on the picnic table and the beers and bottled water in the cooler while Caryn embraces everyone. We all hold each other just a little longer than necessary. We bite our lips. We smile. We tell everyone how great they look and they say the same to us. And in the midst of all this we peer into one another's eyes and ask the unasked and unanswerable: How are you living with this? Are you doing better than I am? Are you living past, living through, living beyond the crash?
And of course we notice the changes. Five years have passed. Fatherless kids have grown up. Sometimes these kids have new fathers, the widow remarries or shyly stands beside a boyfriend she didn't have last year. There's nothing ever said, but all of us, the Families of the Victims, we want the others to like the new people who have come into our lives. Once that's accomplished, then often they don't return. I've noticed that. And this year, I thought our numbers had seriously diminished. One hundred and twenty-two victims can have a lot of friends and family, though not everyone was from Portland, of course. That was the destination. I look around today's picnic and I start counting. Not just numbers, but faces.
The family that always brings the rabbi brought a different rabbi, and I wonder if the original rabbi got tired of these old prayers. The family that always brought the priest wasn't even here. Some people had new babies or toddlers, and I always hoped to see Caryn pick up one of these babies and hold it. But she didn't. She held back.
For me, this reunion picnic is a seminar. Really, like those update-your-triage-technique seminars that hospitals are always giving for nurses. I want to know what's worked for others, their survival strategies. I tuck them away to use for or with Caryn. She isn't my sister or my wife or my partner or any of that, but I see her as my responsibility. I'm the one still here. Five years later.
Caryn goes off to talk to another doctor. I wander among small groups, inquiring in a general fashion, asking in essence, who has found the Wonder Weapon to Slay Grief? Well, this year yoga is very big, but we've tried that, and the outcome was that Caryn could stand on her head. That was nice. Was it the Wonder Weapon to Slay Grief? No. Therapy is always a big topic. Someone has always found the most wonderful therapist or counselor. I hear the name of Kim Ogilvie with an all but audible round of applause. Caryn has done Kim Ogilvie. A couple of years' worth. In my opinion, Kim is an okay counselor, but really she's just as limited a human being as any of us. Kim talked a lot about grief abatement. Time does that. She was supposed to do more. When Caryn quit seeing Kim, she wasn't back to square one, no, but she was still treading water there in the sea of grief, and she still had not had the energy or wish to swim to shore.
So beer in hand, I move to another group. I overhear discussion of a book one guy endorses, called, oddly, "The Laughing Cat." He's rattling on about the laughing reflex and the author who maintains that humans are porous creatures, that experience and emotion come from both inside and outside the individual, and you needn't confine yourself to one or the other but approach the more accessible. "You have to think about the ordinary in an extraordinary way. You have to become not just conscious, but cognizant."
"What's that got to do with the cat?" I ask.
"Have you ever seen a cat laugh?"
"I don't think so," I replied, "but I've never tickled one, either."
I moved along to another group, hoping I'd find something better than guru rehash. Holding my beer, I join some remodelers, people who are really get-down engaged with the kitchen, the bathroom, the contractor. These people are really animated and into it and stepping out of grief, but we've done that too, Caryn and me. Years ago. Tore off the wallpaper, tore out the fixtures, redid her bedroom and her bathroom after Steve moved out. It was fine and cathartic, and expelled Steve (worth doing), but did it lift her from the sea of grief? No.
I find a pretty large gathering of people, maybe fifteen or so, who are concentrating on the lawsuit. Oh, yes, the Families of the Victims Lawsuit, which has been dragging on for years, dragging all through the courts and boardrooms like Marley's ghost dragging his chains. Class action. Or inaction. They're discussing the proposed settlement. Some people who had retained their own attorneys are doing better than those of us who went with the class action. These people are all p issed off. Their strategy for grief is to channel it into the courts and indignation and float it on a sea of briefs. It seems to help them. It's not Caryn's style, or mine.
I'm on my second beer when I start to understand that the people who really are doing fine are not here. They're doing so fine they don't need to come commemorate their losses with the other survivors. Those people will not be back.
I find a group who have been traveling this past year. That sounded promising. I can't remember the last time Caryn went anywhere except home to Grosse Pointe for the holidays. I haven't been to Europe in fifteen years. But best of all, said these survivors, it wasn't just Greece or Fiji, but that they could leave their sorrow at home. "We were on a cruise," said one woman whose fiance had died, "my sister and I, and she said to me, no one knows. Isn't that wonderful? No one knows about the plane crash unless we tell them."
"Did you?" I asked.
"No. I can't bear the obligatory condolences. When people find out what happened to you, they're shocked and they all say how sorry they are, and I can't bear it." She gave a rueful glance to the new bride of a man whose first wife had perished.
I looked at the bride and her husband; they would not be back next year.
Just then, I get accosted by Sam Fredericks, the Dirty Old Man of the survivors. I can write Sam's dialogue by now.
Copyright 2004 by Laura Kalpakian
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