This Australian summer has so far been brutal and it’s only January. Don’t be fooled by the Sydney beach scene above – I was home by 9am. Heat and humidity are my (MS-related) kryptonite, causing me to retreat into books and, if I find a good tv series, please let me binge watch it. At the moment, I always have three books on the go. One on audio for driving, watering the garden or walking (heat permitting), one in hard copy for the sofa when I’ve no energy for anything else, and one on Kindle at bedtime. The fact that the three I’ve recently read are all experimental memoirs is no coincidence, as each one led me to the next. Beginning with the most recent:
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krause Rosenthal
I’ll get to the book in a moment, because this discovery is really about the person – a true creative who died way too early at age 51.
Amy Krause Rosenthal was an American author of award-winning books for children and adults, a memoirist, an essayist, a short film maker, a radio host and so much more. Although I’ve heard of some of her children’s books, I never knew the story of their creator. Perhaps in the USA she’s a household name, but in Australia not necessarily so. (I only heard of her when she was mentioned by author Jennifer Lang in an interview about her own memoirs (my review of those below).
Ten days before Amy Rosenthal’s death in 2017, The New Yorker published her essay, You Might Want To Marry My Husband.
Written as a dating profile for her husband so he would be able to marry again, it is a light-heartedly heart-breaking tribute to him and to their life together. Jason Rosenthal’s equally moving response was published in the New Yorker a year later.
Rosenthal’s website is definitely worth a visit where her quirkiness is on display. You can even choose your “website ambience” (rain, waves, music etc). I’ve been on the site numerous times and find something new and uplifting each time. There are links to her films, talks and inspiring community events, as well as information about the foundation she set up with her husband to raise funds for ovarian cancer research and children’s literacy initiatives.
And now to the book.
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life is presented as an alphabetised encyclopedia, including cross-references, conveying the sum of knowledge she had accumulated to that point. She makes pithy, insightful and hilarious observations. Like Rosenthal, I grew up in the 60s and 70s and identify with all her references to the television, music and fashion of the time. Some entries are short, defining something that we’re aware of but have never put into words. For example, under the letter C, the first entry is CAB OF TRUCK:
Seeing just the short, truncated nubby front of a semi-truck (the cab), one is always compelled to point and say look…It registers in the brain as funny, odd, on the loose.
Exactly! On the loose – like an escaped toddler.
Other entries open out into explorations of family life, relationships and deeper experiences. Under 3841 BORDEAUX, her home address for eleven years, Rosenthal describes her perception of time during childhood:
For those were the years when a year was an eternity of days. Time was somewhere between stretched out and non-existent. Life wasn’t forward-moving then; life just was. It was big and beautiful and motionless as my mahogany dresser.
She goes on to list the many constants of her life during those years, building a picture of growing up in a loving family.
And just one more example because I love the notion that past regrets can be resolved like this. Under TEARS, Rosenthal imagines a conversation with the (long dead) man who ran the overnight summer camp she attended as a child, in which she apologises for not paying more attention to the obvious challenges he faced (a wife and daughter with disabilities). She also writes his imagined response.
Amy, it’s okay. You were twelve.
It’s not okay.
It’s okay.
I wanted to tell you this.
This is a book you can dip into anywhere and you’ll find something that resonates.
Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature and Landed A Yogi’s Memoir in Pieces and Poses by Jennifer Lang
I love both these memoirs, by Jennifer Lang that came out in close succession. They are written in what Lang describes as unconventional prose, playing with form in various ways, including very short chapters (sometimes only a few words) and switching between prose and poetry.
Places We left Behind really is a miniature memoir (I think only some 14,000 words) Spanning several decades, it bounces between Israel, France and the US, as American-born Lang who was raised as a Reform Jew in California and her French-born and more observant husband search for compromise in where (and how) they belong as a couple and a family.
For such a concise book, it has plenty of themes — identity, belonging, and place being three big ones — yet it is written and presented with such a light touch. Lang uses playful shortcuts, such as pros and cons lists, charts and strike-throughs to illustrate her internal struggles over the enormous decisions before her. Her use of humour and understatement serve to amplify the emotional power of the book. Although it’s short and the questions addressed so large, her skill is providing a beautiful story that feels complete — until a surprise cliffhanger leaves you wanting more…
Just as well her follow-up memoir has now been released: Landed A Yogi’s Memoir in Pieces and Poses. Once again, Lang finds herself living as an outsider when the family moves from New York back to Israel after her son announces his plan to attend military service there. Old tensions in her cross-cultural marriage re-surface as she struggles to overcome her sense of dislocation both geographically and within her marriage, while also confronting issues of aging and the prospect of children leaving home:
Maybe it’s midlife. Time slipping. A grown-up fear of missing out. Or maybe it’s my own mortality staring at me.
“What do you want to do about it?” [Her husband] asks.
I shoulder shrug, letting the tension hang between us like black-out blinds.
We already know from the first book the importance of yoga in Lang’s efforts to find her place in the world. In this follow-up memoir, the practice of yoga as both student and teacher becomes even more central. The seven chakras of the body and what they represent in her personal journey provide a kind of structure for the book.
Lang paints a vivid picture of her life in Israel and her sense of always being viewed as an immigrant, no matter how long she lives there. Her homesickness is never far away, depicted here with trademark brevity:
It’s late October, the sun still holding court outside and I miss the East Coast’s changing leaves.
Although Lang’s experiences are profoundly different to my own, there was much that resonated for me in this search for what it means to be home.
Landed was written before, but released after the events of October 7, 2023, something the author addresses in the Preface.
I would recommend reading both books in hard copy to get the full effect of the visual techniques.
And one last thing before I go, a very quick look at something I watched the other night. It wouldn’t qualify as experimental, but it’s certainly different.
Locke
Written and directed by Stephen Knight, this film starring Tom Hardy as Ivan Locke, is a road trip like no other. The action takes place almost entirely inside the car as Locke, the only onscreen character, drives from Birmingham to London. Essentially, in a case of very bad timing, the various threads of Locke’s life threaten to unravel in a series of mobile phone calls with the key people in his life. It’s intense and darkly humorous, and several times I found myself laughing out loud. Could anyone but Hardy have played this role? What a presence!
Locke can currently be seen on Netflix.
Great reviews and reading recommendations. Love your style!
Thanks Meredith 🙂 🙂
I’ve read both those Jennifer Lang books too, and have to say I agree completely. I love the little symbols, the strike-throughs, the black square that means her sibling (ouch) and the use of Hebrew script. I recently read a new novel that used a lot of Mandarin script (translated, helpfully) so maybe this is a trend. But I don’t want to ignore the tension in Lang’s story – in her life, her family, her community. It was certainly an interesting time to have an inside view of life in Israel.
And now I’ve ordered the Rosenthal memoir too! Not sure whether to follow up those links first … actually I don’t think I can wait. Get out the hanky, for sure. Thanks for bringing her to my attention.
Glad you feel the same, Jen, and now I’m curious about the book with Mandarin script. I love seeing these different approaches to presenting a story. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed with Amy Rosenthal’s memoir as well.
Elizabeth, that book with Mandarin (?Cantonese)(Do they use the same script?) is Ghost Cities by Siang Lu. It’s really good.
Ghost Cities — sounds interesting. Thanks, Jen. I’ll look it up.