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Loading... My Father's Guitar and Other Imaginary Thingsby Joseph Skibell
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Short collection of autobiographical sketches. The last couple are very good. ( ) This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. I've only read a couple stories so far, but the title story "My Father's Guitar" is amazing! I'm considering getting the Kindle version just so I can keep it with me. Excellent book! This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Read a couple of the essays, skimmed through one or two more. They weren't terrible, the writing wasn't bad, but the stories just didn't keep my interest, so I gave up. Too many other books to read. This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. I love these short stories. The authors prospective, and wording made me smile each time. In addition, the stories are short enough that you can read them on the go. This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. A fun and sometimes quite thought-provoking read. Memory is a zephyr, and this collection of odd and often unsubstantiated recollections proves that. I've had similar experiences, where conversations I've had get denied later - "I never said any such thing!" and throw my world for a loop.Some of the essays are very funny. Loved the one about turning the tables on telemarketers and the bizarre conversations that ensued. no reviews | add a review
Often comic, sometimes tender, profoundly truthful, the pleasure in these nonfiction pieces by award-winning novelist Joseph Skibell is discovering along with the author that catastrophes, fantasies, and delusions are what give sweetness and shape to our lives. "As a writer," Skibell has said, "I feel about life the way the people of the Plains felt about the buffalo: I want to use every part of it." In My Father's Guitar and Other Imaginary Things, his first nonfiction work, he mines the events of his own life to create a captivating collection of personal essays, a suite of intimate stories that blurs the line between funny and poignant, and between the imaginary and the real. Often improbable, these stories are 100 percent true. Skibell misremembers the guitar his father promised him; together, he and a telemarketer dream of a better world; a major work of Holocaust art turns out to have been painted by his cousin. Woven together, the stories paint a complex portrait of a man and his family: a businessman father and an artistic son and the difficult love between them; complicated uncles, cousins, and sisters; a haunted house; and--of course--an imaginary guitar. Skibell's novels have been praised as "startlingly original" (the Washington Post), "magical" (the New Yorker), and the work of "a gifted, committed imagination" (the New York Times). With his distinctive style, he has been referred to as "the bastard love child of Mark Twain, I. B. Singer, and Wes Anderson, left on a doorstep in Lubbock, Texas." No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumJoseph Skibell's book My Father's Guitar And Other Imaginary Things was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNone
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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