Making Toast: Summary and book reviews of Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt, plus links to an excerpt from Making Toast and a biography of Roger Rosenblatt.
Making Toast A Family Story
by Roger Rosenblatt
Hardcover: Mar 2010,
176 pages.
Paperback: Feb 2011,
128 pages.
When his daughter Amy, a gifted doctor, mother, and wife collapsed and died from an asymptomatic heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife, Ginny, left their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren. With the wit, heart, precision, and depth of understanding that has characterized his work, Roger Rosenblatt peels back the layers on this most personal of losses to create both a tribute to his late daughter and a testament to familial love. The day Amy died, Harris told Ginny and Roger, "It's impossible." Rosenblatt's story tells how a family makes the possible out of the impossible.
With the wit, heart, precision, and depth of understanding that has characterized his work, Roger Rosenblatt peels back the layers on this most personal of losses to create both a tribute to his late daughter and a testament to familial love.
22 out of 27 BookBrowse readers gave Making Toast 4 or 5 stars. Here's what they had to say:
A wonderfully written account of how one family handles a very painful event. I can think of no more heartwarming relationship than a grandparent and grandchild. Although this relationship is forged through painful conditions, the story is told in such an honest and factual, but warm and loving way that this is a book you will learn from and remember (C H). This is without a doubt the best book I have ever read on how to "get on with getting on". Making Toast will make you cry, but in doing so it might make you a better person. Read this book (Lois G)! (Reviewed by BookBrowse First Impression Reviewers).
The Christian Science Monitor
The careful, deliberate writing... lays out every instance where Amy’s absence was noticed. Rosenblatt handles these moments delicately, often cloaking them in wit or anecdotes...
If there’s one shortcoming to Making Toast, it’s that Rosenblatt’s writing itself feels dispassionate. The anger that Rosenblatt mentions so frequently comes across as muffled and technical. Yet [he] commands your attention by other means... each isolated story makes your heart ache... a bleakly beautiful scatter plot of grief.
The Washington Post - Carolyn See
The story is about coping with grief, caring for children and creating an ad hoc family for as long as this particular configuration is required, but mostly it's a textbook on what constitutes perfect writing and how to be a class act.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. [A] beautiful account of human loss, measured by the steady effort to fill in the void.
Kirkus Reviews
There is plenty of hugging and tears, but thankfully no mawkishness or emotional manipulation. Through the glass of the author's transparent style we see all the sharp and soft contours of grief
E.L. Doctorow
A painfully beautiful memoir telling how grandparents are made over into parents, how people die out of order, how time goes backwards. Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive.
Ann Beattie
Written so forthrightly, but so delicately, that you feel you're a part of this family.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Amanda Only read if you are depressed If you are looking for a book that’ll make you feel depressed about life, then Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt, is indeed to book for you.
This book is about a family who suffers a tragedy, when a beloved wife, mother, and daughter suddenly... Read More
Rated of 5
by Alma Toching The book cover says this is a family story; I’d say it’s also a love story. The author talks about his grief, anger and resentment, but I can tell he is talking about joy, family bonds and love to life, too.
I enjoyed this book. I cried, I... Read More
Rated of 5
by C H. (Wauwatosa, WI) Making Toast A wonderfully written account of how one family handles a very painful event. This is a memoir of parents whose daughter dies leaving behind a husband and three young children. The author and his wife leave behind the life they have to join the... Read More
Rated of 5
by Karen E. (Salt Lake City, UT) Sweet Surprise I found this book to be immensely readable and enjoyable. Since it is about the aftermath of the author's daughter's death, that was a bit surprising. Mr Rosenblatt professes to be a man who doesn't believe in God, yet his book points out dozens... Read More
Rated of 5
by Lois G. (Redding, California) Best read of the year. I read a lot of books. I live with books all around me. I love books and I love this book. I opened it as soon as it arrived and had it read within 24 hours. This is without a doubt the best book I have ever read on how to "get on with getting on".... Read More
Rated of 5
by Eva R. (Westmont, IL) Heartbreak with Love This book was written from the heart and as the reader you feel the emotions and the love. This book touched my heart, deeply. It showed me that there are families that care about each other deeply, especially in times of crisis. It reaffirmed the... Read More
Roger Rosenblatt (born in 1940), is a journalist, author, playwright, and teacher.
His contributions to Time and PBS have won two George Polk Awards, a Peabody Award,
and an Emmy Award. He is the author of five Off-Broadway plays and twelve books,
including the national bestseller Rules
for Aging and Children of War, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize
and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Lapham
Rising, also a national bestseller, was his first novel.
"Naipaul's style is so frank it seems intimate ...behind the matter-of-fact style is a cuttingly ironic view of human relations...when Naipaul talks, we listen." Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize.
Keeper is a fiercely honest "glimpse into the dementia abyss" - an endlessly engrossing meditation on memory and the mind, on family, and on a society that is largely indifferent to the far-reaching ravages of this baffling disease.
These are 2 of the 13 readalike suggestions for Making Toast. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today's globalized world.
The story of an American family, middle class in middle America, ordinary in every way but one. But that exception is the beating heart of this extraordinary novel.
The best book I've read in a very long time and the first ever Bo Caldwell novel for me. I'd never before read anything about missionaries to China,...
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With a poetic voice, Ratner plunges us into this personal trial of a royal family wrenched from their home in Phnon Penh, Cambodia, during the late...
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(780 words).
E.L. Doctorow
of 5
by Amanda
of 5
by Alma
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Roger Rosenblatt (born in 1940), is a journalist, author, playwright, and teacher.
His contributions to Time and PBS have won two George Polk Awards, a Peabody Award,
and an Emmy Award. He is the author of five Off-Broadway plays and twelve books,
including the national bestseller Rules
for Aging and Children of War, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize
and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Lapham
Rising, also a national bestseller, was his first novel.
