Afbeelding auteur

Katherine Clark

Auteur van Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story

10 Werken 152 Leden 7 Besprekingen

Reeksen

Werken van Katherine Clark

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Er zijn nog geen Algemene Kennis-gegevens over deze auteur. Je kunt helpen.

Leden

Besprekingen

Oh, the sheer joy of this book, which is not outweighed in the least by the rarity of coming across a writer with complete command of language and craft. The Headmaster’s Darlings has so much excellence going on that it’s a challenge for me to know where to slather my gushing praise first! Within its 245 pages of the tightest, page-turning story I’ve read in as long as I can remember, there is comedy, sarcasm, heart-tugging sentimentality, social commentary, and suspense to the point where, when I wasn’t laughing out loud over Katherine Clark’s spot-on Southern cultural insight, I was re-reading her laser-sharp paragraphs as if they were a writer’s tutorial. Crisp, clever, economic sentences lead the reader through the story of the obese Norman Laney, a beloved high school teacher in Birmingham, Alabama, whose job lays in the balance of rumor and false accusation. But it is 1980’s Birmingham society that is judge, jury and executioner, and Norman Laney knows how to game the system. So wise to the eccentricities of an insular, antiquated, upper-class society, Norman Laney beats them at
their own game by being one of them. He is both fish-out-of-water and ruler of the roost in a story that is part comedy of manners and part
emperor’s new clothes. It is not so much the story as the telling of the story that makes or breaks a book for me. Kathrine Clark gives us her all, nay, way more than we expect in sardonically laying bare the mind frame of Birmingham, Alabama’s cloistered elitist society, whose aspirations are maintaining the status quo. Yet Norman Laney is a teacher of principle and integrity, in the field for all the right reasons, which he has to keep under wraps, lest he startle society’s neat and resistant grid of logic by which it defines itself. Written in a tone that both laughs and bites at the nuances of Southern society, there is an undercurrent of nonjudgmental acceptance of a culture as old as the hills as it seeks to raise its next generation in a manner that aspires to keeping it so. Yet it is Norman Laney’s aim to teach his students to aspire to at least something by reaching beyond themselves, and he must lead by appeasing Birmingham’s old guard as he acts as guidance counselor to their offspring. The Headmaster’s Darlings is more than a comedic social commentary on a staid Southern mentality that will be its own hubris in the end; the book doles out a lure that shows the way out, and slips it in undetected from the cunning lead of one impressionable teacher, who knows his way around covert maneuver. I understand there are two more books behind this one. My hand hovers in anticipatory wait over my Kindle.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
Clairefullerton | Nov 27, 2019 |
Oh, the gift of this delightful book. The thing about Pat Conroy is those who get him really get him and can never get enough. It has been repeatedly written that readers feel as if they know him. That he wrote in the first person was part of what spawned the relationship between Conroy and his readers, the rest of it is that he had an uncanny way of unabashedly calling things by name and spoke for us. And any Conroy devotee knew he was healing his shattered history by veiling it in fiction. We knew it and didn’t care because not only was he charming, he was a master storyteller. Conroy wrote from the center of his sardonic personality. Once he had you, he dove down to universal truth and brought you to your knees. This business of life is not for the meek, he suggested, but there is rhyme to it, poetry, in fact, and in his fiction, he figured out how to survive it.
My Exaggerated Life gives us the man behind the curtain. On its cover is Conroy wearing his infamous flight jacket and Citadel ring, which his fans will recognize as symbols of his personal narrative. Conroy was that kind of writer. His books were mind-altering drugs and his readers were addicts who had to have more. Katherine Clark has given us more in what seems to me a labor of love. That she spent two hundred hours listening to Conroy spill out his life over the telephone to assemble this book makes me jealous, but I’ll overlook that in favor of the resounding result.
What struck me most in reading My Exaggerated Life was the realization that there was no separating the man from his craft. It’s Conroy’s voice that does it. In these pages speaks a storyteller of the highest order telling an incredibly entertaining story, it just so happens to be culled from a series of events in his life. You can intuit the haphazard way he stumbled from cause to effect as his writing career took shape. Reading Conroy’s books always made me feel they were born without effort, so to discover in this riveting book just where the struggle had been hit me as staggering—not because parts were painful to read, but because he framed it in such a human way that readers will think, you too?
At the end of My Exaggerated Life, Katherine Clark shares the speech Pat Conroy delivered spontaneously before a crowd of adoring fans in Beaufort, South Carolina at his 70th birthday celebration. In it, Conroy claims “What I wanted to be as a writer, I wanted to be a complete brave man that I am not in my real life.” He did just this in My Exaggerated Life. In an act of bravery, Pat Conroy told his story, and author Katherine Clark captured it in a book that is one for the archives.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
Clairefullerton | 3 andere besprekingen | Nov 26, 2019 |
Pat Conroy is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read most everything he’s written. This book, a biography of him, is one I wish I had skipped. First of all, much of it is contained in one of his autobiographical books, and second, this book reads more like a transcript of the sessions he had with his shrink than it does a biography. In fact, each chapter of this book contains comments from his psychiatrist about Conroy’s sessions with him. I hate to say it, but this book sounds whiny. Conroy, always self deprecating, sounds more pathetic than self deprecating here. His relationships with women rival Donald Trump in their dysfunction, and he admits in this book that he spent much too much time trying to please people, and not just the Great Santini, but everyone. Conroy’s baggage is so heavy, it’s a wonder he got through this life. All of that said, I still enjoy the books he himself wrote.… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
FormerEnglishTeacher | 3 andere besprekingen | Jun 18, 2019 |
Pat Conroy is one of my cherished author's, so I had much hope for this memoir being a chance to visit again. I was disappointed and struggled to get through the 300 plus pages. Much of the material has been previously covered and too many people were named. This book is not of the caliber of even his weakest novels. My time would have been better spent rereading Conroy.
 
Gemarkeerd
MM_Jones | 3 andere besprekingen | Jun 5, 2018 |

Lijsten

Prijzen

Statistieken

Werken
10
Leden
152
Waardering
½ 4.4
Besprekingen
7
ISBNs
21

Tabellen & Grafieken