A. Katz

It'll stay with me

Revisado: 11-04-22

I've read memoirs before about women and their parents, about 'second generation' (children of survivors of the Holocaust), or about solving mysteries and searching for answers.... but this book is all of the above all at once and by far the most compelling. And the audiobook, with the author's thoroughly engaging narration .... it's like she's telling you the story over coffee at the corner cafe.

The emotions are overwhelming....as you'd expect from a memoir like this. But then the moments sprinkled throughout the tale of wry humor.... perfect. (At one point when I laughed out loud and my husband, across the room, said in confusion, "I thought you were listening to a Holocaust memoir?" I couldn't explain. But you know what, when the author/narrator laughs with you.... it's okay to laugh, really. Cathartic, even.)

There's even a Bob Dylan cameo.

Seriously, listen to the audiobook. I imagine that reading it is also wonderful, but the audiobook narration is just next level.

I was surprised at how it left me with a deeper empathy for my own parents, and at the same time an overwhelming compassion for myself, for my own behavior through the last years of my parents' lives, and for the ignorance we all have about our parents' inner lives....

Anyway. Highly recommended. One of the few audiobooks that I look forward to listening to again.

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Five stars across the board for a crucial read

Revisado: 09-19-22

Getting to know the families is both heartbreaking and inspiring.
Getting to know the media personalities is entirely disturbing.
And reading/hearing this story play out through the book is to deep-dive into what's happening in the U.S, over and over, and magnified into so many spheres.
Highly recommended.

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Detailed excellent book

Revisado: 08-21-22

but the performance was frustrating, as the reader clearly didn't put effort into correct pronunciation of names and places, and there were two outright errors in the reading.

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Trainspotting

Revisado: 01-03-17

I struggled with the written version of this 20 years ago and gave up at some point in the early chapters. The phonetic spellings were too distracting and I couldn't get into it. With the new movie coming out, I tried again, and once again it didn't work for me.

But as spoken Scots accents are so musical to me, when the lightbulb went off in my head to look for the audiobook, well, it was a no-brainer.

The reader/narrator did a wonderful job bringing the book to life.

The book itself is so much more than the movie (not to take anything away from the movie, though), with emotional kicks to the gut when least expected, and the connection with the characters is on another level entirely.

For anyone who had a hard time reading the book, I strongly recommend trying the audiobook version. Very much worth it.

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Very well done

Revisado: 12-08-16

Any additional comments?

I'd quibble with the Publisher's Summary on the Audible page, because I didn't come away from the book feeling like Shulem was "raised to believe that questions are dangerous."
It sounded/read to me that he chose, for very personal reasons, in his teen and early adult years, to join a community that believed that questions are dangerous. And that this was the community he was married and had a family in.

The trajectory of his loss of belief is a very tragically beautiful read, as he desperately looks for answers to the questions that his community doesn't want him to ask. He seems to have specific answers in mind that he needs to hear, and when he doesn't get the answers he wants, he takes it very hard.

The tragedy is in the community's response, and what happened with his exwife and his children in response to his personal evolution. The beauty is in his birth family's (his mother's and his siblings') unconditional love and acceptance, as they remain believers (notably not in the same community that he chose to live in).

The audio performance is very well done.

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