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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
hopeful
lighthearted
adventurous
funny
reflective
fast-paced
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
I think that if you like this particular style of essay like memoir, then you will love this memoir. There isn’t a coherent story within the memoir, it’s a lot about Vivian’s life that falls under the theme of being ‘the Odd Women’, friendship, singledom/the search for love and New York as a main character in a lot of ways.
While I did enjoy it and liked the style, I think I just would enjoyed it more if I were more familiar with the author’s other work!
While I did enjoy it and liked the style, I think I just would enjoyed it more if I were more familiar with the author’s other work!
love gornick's writing style. think she does best in her shortest form pieces
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
funny
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
The street keeps moving, and you've got to love the movement. You've got to find the composition of the rhythm, lift the story from the motion, understand and not regret that the power of narrative drive is fragile, though infinite.
Civilisation is breaking up? The city is deranged? The century surreal?
Move faster. Find the story line more quickly.
This was a light-hearted and touching read; a 'narrative collage' capturing glimpses of Vivian Gornick's life in the Big Apple over the decades through her daily interactions and encounters. Her longstanding and steady friendship with Leonard is an enjoyable recurring feature of the book, and too I felt captured the gentle amiability of the friendship of the older generations - it reminded me of my dear late Gran and her friend Leo, of whom she was very fond.
The book is not structured into chapters, and although autobiographical, there is not much detail on the more momentous occasions of Gornick's life either. Rather, the passages recall conversations overheard on the subway, run-ins with neighbours and acquaintances, and Gornick's thoughts on life in the metropolis. In doing so I felt it effectively portrayed the essence of life in New York, transmitting to the reader the sense of vivacity, spontaneity and flair of the city; a city that is both chaotic yet coherent.
I very much enjoyed Gornick's writing style and humorous tone, and am keen to read her acclaimed memoir, Fierce Attachments (1987), which explores her volatile relationship with her mother.
Also keen to move back to New York.
New York isn't jobs, they reply, it's temperament. Most people are in New York because they need evidence - in large quantities - of human expressiveness; and they need it not now and then, but everyday. That is what they need. Those who go off to the manageable cities can do without; those who come to New York cannot.
Or perhaps I should say that it is I who cannot.
Solitude and loneliness, two of our greatest social anxieties, are inevitable (and at times barely discernible) states of being – both often carrying a stigma that generates silence rather than celebration. Gornick’s ruminations, however, extol the virtues of these ineluctable conditions with an elegance that ennobles us misfits and autonomy junkies.