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Apple, Tree

Writers on Their Parents

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

In this masterful collection of new essays, the apple looks at the tree. Twenty-five writers deftly explore a trait they've inherited from a parent, reflecting on how it affects the lives they lead today—how it shifts their relationship to that parent (sometimes posthumously) and to their sense of self.
Apple, Tree's all-star lineup of writers brings eloquence, integrity, and humor to topics such as arrogance, obsession, psychics, grudges, table manners, luck, and laundry. Contributors include Laura van den Berg, S. Bear Bergman, John Freeman, Jane Hamilton, Mat Johnson, Daniel Mendelsohn, Kyoko Mori, Ann Patchett, and Sallie Tisdale, among others. Together, their pieces form a prismatic meditation on how we make fresh sense of ourselves and our parents when we see the pieces of them that live on in us.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 22, 2019
      The old adage, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” encouraged Funderburg, a University of Pennsylvania lecturer, to explore its truth in this sparkling anthology of essays on the contributors’ parents. Its selections all echo John Freeman’s declaration, “Love is in clarity, not sentiment.” Freeman, like Kyoko Mori and Avi Steinberg, find benefit in troublesome family legacies. Marc Mewshaw and Jane Hamilton look back on a parent’s writing career, and Bear Bergman credits his father’s knack for oral, rather than written, storytelling with shaping his own narrative abilities. Lauren Grodstein and Karen Grigsby Bates pay tribute to their mothers’ cooking, and Susan Ito and Dana Prescott do the same to the adventurous, extroverted lives of their fathers (both traveling salesmen.) Lolis Eric Elie reflects on the uncommon first name he shares with his father and son, and Ann Patchett muses on the close likeness she bears to her mother. These essays particularly excel with serving up memorable last lines, as in Patchett’s piece, in which the nurse overseeing her mother’s hospital care comments on how similar they look—“Like sisters?” Patchett asks, to which the nurse replies, “No, like the same person.” These essays, in addition to being resonant in their own right, will also move readers to recollect stories of their own parents. Agent: Geri Thoma, Writers House.

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Languages

  • English

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