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A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy
by Edward Hirsch
From the award-winning poet, dark comic microbursts of prose deliver a whole childhood, at the hands of an aspiring middle-class Jewish family whose hard-boiled American values and wit were the forge of a poet's coming-of-age.
"My grandparents taught me to write my sins on paper and cast them into the water... . They didn't expect an entire book," Hirsch says in the "prologue" to this glorious festival of knife-sharp observations. In microchapters—sometimes only a single scathing sentence long—with titles like "Call to Breakfast," "Pay Cash," "The Sorrow of Manly Sports," and "Aristotle on Lawrence Avenue," Eddie's gambling father, Ruby, son of a white metal smelter, schools him and his sister in blackjack; Eddie's mom bangs pots to wake the kids to a breakfast of cold cereal; Uncle Bob, in the collection business, is heard threatening people on the phone; and nobody suffers fools. In this household, Eddie learned to jab with his left and cross with his right, never to kid a kidder, and how to sneak out at night.
Affectionate, deadpan, and exuberant, steeped in Yiddishkeit and Midwestern practicality, Hirsch's laugh-and-cry performance animates a heartbreaking odyssey, from the cradle to the day he leaves home, armed with sorrow and a huge store of poetic wit.
"Bada bing, bada boom! Hirsch ... channels the voices and personalities of his Chicagoland Jewish childhood to create a memoir composed of jokes and short vignettes, one setup-and-punchline after another ... sometimes silly, sometimes off-color, often Yiddish-flavored, with a penchant for puns and dad jokes that never quits... . A unique recreation of a great life in a largely vanished world!" —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A clever, heartfelt, and nostalgic look at Hirsch's childhood, from his pre-history to the day he moved out of his parents' home." —Library Journal (starred review)
"Those who prize linearity and concrete detail might be left wanting, but poetry fans and more adventurous readers will be rewarded by this evocative family portrait." —Publishers Weekly
"An intimate series of sparkling snapshots—delving into Hirsch's history feels like getting caught eavesdropping with your ear stuck to the wall." —Catherine Cohen, author of God I Feel Modern Tonight, actor/comedian and co-host of the podcast Seek Treatment
"For decades, Edward Hirsch has wielded one of American poetry's most unforgettable voices. To have him apply his big brain and wicked wit to a memoir is a major literary event. Hirsch mines his upbringing with both the verve of David Sedaris and the literary pedigree Joyce brought to his portrait of the artist as a young man. Part standup, part wail from the bowels of Skokie, My Childhood in Pieces is an instant classic. Buy this book!" —Mary Karr, author of Cherry, The Liar's Club
This information about My Childhood in Pieces was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Edward Hirsch, a Chicago native and MacArthur Fellow, has published ten books of poetry, including The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems and Gabriel: A Poem, a book-length elegy for his son. He has also published eight books of prose, among them How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry, a national bestseller, and 100 Poems to Break Your Heart. He has received numerous prizes, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award. He taught at Wayne State University and the University of Houston. Since 2003, Hirsch has been president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in Brooklyn.
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