I assumed this was a random small collection of short stories as I picked it up for very cheap at the 2010 Boston Book Festival, but this past week I was in a Barnes and Noble (resisting going off on a ridiculous rant about BN) this past week and it was on display with other ‘New Fiction.’
Overall I enjoyed the various short stories, but a lot of them didn’t really connect me to Boston, the feeling of Boston. Quite a few of them took the typical route – through the Irish connection or the crime, but a lot of them were just sort of stories that could have been anywhere else in the world with the change of a few signifying characteristics (and some couldn’t be). With subjects ranging from turn of the (18th) century dockside stories to Catholic priests and child abuse and WWII survivor stories to a financial district murder, they are broad and cover most of the city.
“I was suddenly aware of how ignorant I was, alive with curiosity, doing academic work at a level I would not have thought possible a few years before. I did not know it yet, but I was learning the basic educational fact of life: the answers are meaningless until the questions are asked.” (17)
It took me entirely way to long to read this book. I would go so far as saying that this is a fascinating fictional case study of an orphan and the doctor who raised him in New England. We spend the entire novel following the orphan Homer Wells and Doctor Wilbur Larch. It’s a rather plain and simple story, but the details and the little twists and turns throughout the novel create the oxymoron of an intricately simple love story. From the love of a ‘father’ to a non-nuclear family’s love for each other and the unrequited love of a childhood friend overall this is a love story and a story about the various types of love you experience through life.
What a fascinating memoir. I knew who John Waters was based on his picture, but had no idea what he had done and who he was in Hollywood. He’s a cult filmmaker, I’ve only seen Hairspray, but recognized a few of the other movies listed. There were two things that I found absolutely fascinating about this book, the first was his fascination with gristliness/grunge/dirtiness and how he wrote the memoir itself.
So I read portions of this a few months ago for book group, but nowhere near enough for it to count as having read the entire book, thus the 25.5. I’m not actually counting this book, but writing a brief review because I loved one of the poems so much. We read probably 20 or so poems from the book (so not even half), but I feel I can count it as a half because we had a good discussion about them.