Audiobook7 hours
A Strong West Wind: A Memoir
Written by Gail Caldwell
Narrated by Nicole Poole
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
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About this audiobook
Gail Caldwell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic for The Boston Globe. Her book A Strong West Wind is a "metaphor-rich, beautifully structured reminiscence" of a child growing up in the turbulent 1960s (Booklist, starred review). Caldwell was born in Texas in 1951; in a land of plains so vast they frightened her. Caldwell's mother was a clandestine lover of books; her father was a master sergeant in World War II. These personalities shaped Caldwell; during the passionate rebellions of the 1960s, she was one of the "children who once made life hell for 'the Greatest Generation' and in the process turned out pretty great themselves" (Russell Baker, author). Turning to books for each poignant change in her life, Caldwell eventually became what her mother could not: a writer. Throughout these changes, Caldwell is driven by the restless desire she once felt as a child in a small town in Texas. "It's refreshing to read a memoir composed of real introspection and insight, a grown-up's mature perspective on a family and an era."-Washington Post Book World "Caldwell comes through as a wise and winning woman-her descriptive passages ... are wonderfully smart, moving and sympathetic-and she emerges ... a memorable narrator."-Publisher's Weekly, starred review
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Reviews for A Strong West Wind
Rating: 3.240000016 out of 5 stars
3/5
25 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Caldwell fans will have a no brainer and any writer wannabe will want to add this to their list. But for the rest of the readers, Caldwell writes as if she's sprawled in your living room or sharing one of your pockets on a cold day. I picked up the audio and the print.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book is beautifully written, but not really my cup of tea. I had a very hard time getting into and staying in this book.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I was drawn to the idea of a memoir written by a literary critic in which she examines the pull of her Texas childhood on the woman she grows into being, who acknowledges the importance of the books she's read in shaping her personality, and who has gone on to have an illustrious and celebrated career in a field that is wildly interesting to me. Unfortunately, unlike almost every other reviewer out there who raves over this memoir, I thought the book fell flat.Divided into two parts: Texas and everything afterwards, this was a painfully slow, navel-gazing read. The writing was able but pretentious. It was emotionally flat. Caldwell is clearly an incredibly erudite woman but her meandering text was a strain. It was a strain to care. It was a strain to stay awake. It was a strain not to close the book for good one night and give into surrender. While she didn't fall into the dysfunctional childhood memoir, exactly, she seems to suggest that her father's exacting and strict influence on her life was somehow injurious. The young girl who overcame being stricken with polio as a baby, who powered through so much on sheer determination as a child, seemed to be lost as she grew up. And in her place was a depressed woman who had somehow lost her way. Riding along with her while she tried to find her sense of self again was not particularly pleasurable, despite the occasional flashes of beautiful imagery. I am essentially alone in my assessment of the book but I don't want another reading experience like this one any time soon.