Archive - September 26, 2014

Breathe: A Memoir of Motherhood, Grief and Family Conflict by Kelly Kittel (Jamaica 1985–87) She Writes Press May 2014 369 pages $18.95 (paperback), $7.69 (Kindle) Reviewed by Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 1976–78) Shortly before I received Kelly Kittel’s wrenching memoir in the mail, I read a piece in The New Yorker about the poet Edward Hirsch, whose book length elegy to his son, dead at 24 of an overdose, has just been published. Hirsch says he didn’t want to write that book. He was mired in mourning and obsessed with the circumstances of his son’s life and death. But ultimately, the writing won out. ” . . . You become resigned,” he says. “Your job is to write about the life you actually have.” In a prologue to her book, Kittel offers a similar insight. She describes her childhood love affair with books and her lifelong hope of becoming a writer. What she . . .