I picked up Roger Rosenblatt’s memoir Making Toast at Morris Bookshop. The cover painting, Still Life with Kettle by Lennart Anderson is what first caught my eye. When you open the flap, you learn that the author and his wife moved in with their son-in-law and three grandkids after their 38-year old daughter Amy collapsed and died on her treadmill. The break out quote at the top of the jacket reads:
“How long are you staying, Boppo?”
“Forever.”
It sounds like it would be tremendously depressing, but it’s actually completely life affirming and beautiful. It begins, “The trick when foraging for a tooth lost in coffee grounds is not to be mislead by the clumps.”
Let the superlatives flow about how well written it is and how I can’t put it down. E.L. Doctorow’s quote on the cover is perfect, “A painfully beautiful memoir telling how grandparents are made over into parents, how people die out of order, how time goes backward. Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive.”
Here is a link to the author speaking about the book generally and here’s a segment of him reading an excerpt from the book at Stony Brook, where he teaches:
I am taking notes in the margins and will have so much more to say about this beautiful book, but for now, I just want to enjoy it.
by Teaworthy
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