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A review by hazelkatherinelarkin
More After the Break: A Reporter Returns to Ten Unforgettable News Stories by Jen Maxfield
3.0
More After the Break is 'a grand book'. The premise is really interesting - a journalist revisits ten of the stories she covered over her twenty years in the business - but the book doesn't live up to the promises of the premises. The writer's own ego gets too much in the way of the stories she is revisiting, and (re)introducing her audience to.
I was more than slightly amused when, in the conclusion, Maxfield tells her listener/reader that, when she was writing the book, her editor gently suggested she 'occasionally include' herself. I fear the writer took this too much to heart: One of the elements of the book that grated most on my nerves was how Maxfield - in every essay - reminds us that she has a Master's Degree from Columbia, and manages to centre herself in every story. I know the difference between introspection and self-examination, and virtue-signaling - and 'More After the Break' is more of the former that the latter.
The first chapter - the tale of Paul Esposito, whose legs were sheared off in the Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 2003 - held my attention, as I learned of this survivor, and how his life had been saved by an English nurse who was on the same ferry. Sadly, none of the other eight chapters had the same effect.
All told, this is the kind of book worth reading only if there is no other reading material close to hand.
I was more than slightly amused when, in the conclusion, Maxfield tells her listener/reader that, when she was writing the book, her editor gently suggested she 'occasionally include' herself. I fear the writer took this too much to heart: One of the elements of the book that grated most on my nerves was how Maxfield - in every essay - reminds us that she has a Master's Degree from Columbia, and manages to centre herself in every story. I know the difference between introspection and self-examination, and virtue-signaling - and 'More After the Break' is more of the former that the latter.
The first chapter - the tale of Paul Esposito, whose legs were sheared off in the Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 2003 - held my attention, as I learned of this survivor, and how his life had been saved by an English nurse who was on the same ferry. Sadly, none of the other eight chapters had the same effect.
All told, this is the kind of book worth reading only if there is no other reading material close to hand.