A truly enjoyable book, The Memoir Club, by Laura Kalpakian examines fictional characters as they take a class on writing memoirs. The chief characters--Jill, Rusty, Francine, Sarah Jane, and Nell--come to terms with their individual past experiences as they learn to reach into their writing and pull out the details, the interest. Through the class and the Memoir Club which follows it, these women share deep, bonding experiences and rebirth of sorts. My one criticism lies with the contrived resolution concerning the instructor, Penny. A favorite bit of writing is on page 203 of the novel "...Sarah Jane's backyard has flowers growing out of men's top hats and out of old working boots and battered saucepans and broken cups. A clementine vine weaves in and out of a rusting iron bedstead, climbs up through the wire springs and covers them....At the very back gate...body of an old pickup truck, from the 20's perhaps, covered in ivy and with a bed of daisies in the back and hollyhocks and foxglove where the engine used to be." Such an engaging image!
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
~Samuel Butler, writer
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