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    Dimestore: A Writer's Life
    Dimestore: A Writer's Life
    Dimestore: A Writer's Life
    Audiobook6 hours

    Dimestore: A Writer's Life

    Written by Lee Smith

    Narrated by Linda Stephens

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In her first work of nonfiction, Lee Smith deploys the wit, wisdom, and graceful prose for which she is beloved to conjure her early days in the small coal town of Grundy, Virginia-and beyond. For the inimitable Lee Smith, place is paramount. For forty-five years, her fiction has lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the Appalachian South. But never before has she written her own story. Set deep in the rugged Appalachian Mountains, the Grundy of Lee Smith's youth was a place of coal miners, mountain music, and her daddy's dimestore. It was in that dimestore--listening to customers and inventing life histories for the store's dolls--that she began to learn the craft of storytelling. Even though she adored Grundy, Smith's formal education and travels took her far from Virginia, though her Appalachian upbringing never left her. Dimestore's fifteen essays are crushingly honest, always wise, and superbly entertaining. Smith has created both a moving, personal portrait and a broader meditation on embracing one's heritage. Hers is an inspiring story of the birth of a writer and a poignant look at a way of life that has all but vanished. "You know how in Lee Smith's fiction there's always something so fresh, crazy, and loving? In Dimestore is the essence of Lee." -Roy Blount Jr., author of Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 22, 2016
    ISBN9781501905247
    Dimestore: A Writer's Life
    Author

    Lee Smith

    Lee Smith is the best-selling author of over a dozen books, including Dimestore: A Writer's Life and Guests on Earth. She lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

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    Reviews for Dimestore

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    • 5/5
      Exquisite! Each individual chapter is like a pearl of beauty, hanging together to form a stunning necklace. The writing is vivid, full of visual and sensual imagery. There is sadness, there is joy, as in every life and the reader is drawn in, sharing the journey. As an audible book, it is delightful. I had mistakenly thought it was narrated by Lee, herself because the telling is so personal. However, the narrator has done a wonderful job. Her voice is mesmerizing, a sheer joy to listen to. Thank you for this beautiful book so beautifully told!
    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir. I think some of my favorite essays were the ones that centered on writing, but they were all good, poignant, and wise.

      In many ways Smith had one of those idyllic childhoods with two doting parents, but they both had their issues, which meant that Smith had to stay with other relatives from time to time. Her mother was "kindly nervous," and her father suffered mental illness.

      Despite its brevity, Smith packs a ton of entertaining tidbits into this book about her life in Grundy, VA and beyond. She was hilarious in parts (like when she thought she'd run out of material to write) and equally riveting when she told of her son's mental illness.

      If you love Smith's fiction, this gives you the key to her thoughts, what makes her tic, and the honesty of her heart. Highly recommend!
    • 4/5
      rabck from maggiesma; Enjoyable collection of reminiscing by an author I never heard of. Born in the appalachian mountains, where her father ran a "dimestore" (hence the title), she jumps around chapter to chapter, writing about bits and pieces of her life. From her childhood with both parents suffering from mental breakdowns (and she's packed off to different relatives), to how she started writing and inspired others to write. She includes bits of writing gems from other authors that she nurtured or discovered, particularly with the "Southern" voices.
    • 1/5
      Just could not get interested . . . it was like reading the same sentence over and over . . . no heart, no passion and, although I dislike using this word, boring . . .
    • 3/5
      This is an odd mix of essays, some about her childhood, growing up in a small, Appalachian coal town where her father owned the local general store, some about her later life, some about writing and some about teaching. By far the strongest portion were those about her childhood - this section was the most vivid and honest. She also came to life talking about some of her writing students. This wasn't a particularly strong book, but it was interesting enough and it did make me want to take a look at a few of her novels.
    • 5/5
      Lee Smith, an Oprah author, has written Dimestore which is not your typical memoir in that it focuses mainly on the author's writing life and how that has been affected and shaped by life events. Lee Smith's father, a manic depressive, owned a dimestore in the mountains of Grundy, Virginia. She did her part with the store such as to help pick out the dolls when she was a child and to arrange them on the shelf and keep them clean. She would move them so that their arms were outstretched as though waiting for a child to come along and pick them up.She was an only child to elderly parents who thought to never have children. They were both mentally ill. Her mother as her father said was "kindly nervous" and would have to spend time in a mental hospital as would her daddy when the depression would hit at the end of a manic episode. But there was always someone in the family to step up and run the store and help out at home and very rarely were both of them in the hospital at the same time.Mental illness is believed to be genetic and her mother's side is rampant with examples of it. It's a wonder Lee wasn't mentally ill herself. However, one of her two sons would be diagnosed as a schizo-affective disorder which is a combination of schizophrenia and manic depression. She and both her first husband and her second husband were lucky in that he, Josh, wanted to take his medicines and gave them no trouble in that way as some mentally ill people can do and with good reason. The side effects can be atrocious and once you start to feel well you begin to believe you do not need them anymore. In Josh's case, the side effect of his medication was causing weight gain and high blood pressure which was doing his heart no favors. At age thirty-three, he died in his sleep of heart failure. This affected Lee's writing in that she at first couldn't write a single thing. Then slowly she began to write her way through her grief.In college, Lee wrote many stories about stewardesses in Hawaii and things such as that but got Bs and Cs. She asked her professor why and he told her to write what she knew. So she wrote a story about a group of older women she remembered from home sitting on the porch talking about the change of life and getting a hysterectomy. She got an A. A writer must find their voice and hers was in the Appalachian Mountains for the most part. It was what she knew and who she was and where she got her stories from.This book is an easy read like gliding down the river (not the mighty Mississippi River that she and her girlfriends take a raft and go down on when she is in college) on a nice Spring day. Yes, there is some sadness in it like when it talks about her son or the changes that have come to her hometown, but overall it is as sweet as the honeysuckle she drinks from and just as good. QuotesNow they are going to really talk, about somebody who “has just never been quite right, bless her heart,” or somebody who is “kindly nervous”, or somebody else who’s “been having trouble down there.” Down there is a secret place, a foreign country, like Mexico or Nicaragua.-Lee Smith (Dimestore: A Writer’s Life p 14)No matter what is wrong with you, a sausage biscuit will make you feel a whole lot better.-Lee Smith (Dimestore: A Writer’s Life p 39)My father was fond of saying that I would climb a tree to tell to tell a lie rather than stand on the ground to tell the truth.-Lee Smith (Dimestore: A Writer’s Life p 63-4)The South runs on denial. We learn denial in the cradle and carry it to the grave. It is absolutely essential to being a lady, for instance. My Aunt Gay-Gay’s two specialties were Rising to the Occasion and Rising Above It All, whatever “it” happened to be. Aunt Gay-Gay believed that if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all. If you don’t discuss something, it doesn’t exist. She drank a lot of gin and tonics and sometimes she’d start in on them early, winking at my Uncle Bob and saying, “Pour me one, honey, it’s dark underneath the house.”-Lee Smith (Dimestore: A Writer’s Life p 110-11)A layer of conservatism still covers Dixie like dew. As a whole, we Southerners are still religious, and we are still violent. We’ll bring you a casserole, but we’ll kill you, too. Southern women, both black and white, have always been more likely than Northern women to work outside the home, despite the image projected by such country lyrics as “Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed, this women’s literature is a-going to your head.” It was not because we were so liberated; it’s because we were so poor.-Lee Smith (Dimestore: A Writer’s Life p 117)I asked him whether or not he believed in Jesus. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “Every time I’m in the hospital, there are at least three people in there who think they’re Jesus. So sometimes I think, well, maybe Jesus wasn’t Jesus at all—maybe he was just the first schizophrenic.”-Lee Smith (Dimestore: A Writer’s Life p 129-30)Anne Tyler noted when somebody asked her why she writes, and she answered, “I write because I want more than one life.”-Lee Smith (Dimestore: A Writer’s Life p 167)
    • 5/5
      The essays in this collection form a memoir of Lee Smith's life, as a southerner and as a writer. The title refers to Smith's father's general store- the center of her community in Appalachian Virginia. Smith's essays deal with her coming of age, coming to terms with her Appalachian identity, family tragedies, and the growth of her writing career. All of the essays are poignant and beautifully written. She is open and forthcoming about her family's struggles with mental illness. The essays are comfortable and easy to read, but they also deal with weighty and significant issues. This is a memoir that addresses adult nostalgia for home. Smith discovers when she returns to Grundy that she can't go home again (in fact, there's a Wal-Mart there now). Smith's memoir also deals with the anxieties created by moving out of her home environment, especially a home environment seen as deprived. In sum, these essays deal with identity, literature, life's exhilarations and life's tragedies. It is beautifully written, and well-worth reading.
    • 4/5
      Dimestore is a collection of essays by fiction writer, Lee Smith, linked together to form a memoir. The essays discuss her early years, describe her family, and the way of life in Grundy, Virginia, a town on the banks of a river prone to flooding.While the reminiscences of her early life, which encompass most of the essays at the beginning of Dimestore, are interesting, it isn’t until later essays which talk about her son, Josh, and his struggle with schizophrenia, and her identity as a writer that I felt her writing really shine. The prose sparkles.The essay about Josh, “Good-bye to the Sunset Man” left me in tears, the way stories do when the person described is full of life and heart, especially as they attempt to overcome adversity.The early essays are interesting for the most part because they describe another place in time, a slower time not mired in superficiality, that seems largely forgotten in this cell phone vacuum world.If you are a writer, you may recognize yourself in “A Life in Books.” A person writes because they want to live beyond their own life. They write because to not do so would be unthinkable because a writer is more of himself when writing.“I’ve been trying to pay attention ever since, realizing that writing is not about fame, or even publication. It is not about exalted language, abstract themes, or the escapades of glamorous people. It is about our own real world and our own real lives and understanding what happens to us day by day, it is about playing with children and listening to old people.”For anyone who writes and finds that it’s their lifeblood, the above quote describes the life in a nutshell.I highly recommend Dimestore for fans of Lee Smith as well as writers who will find their own thoughts in part described in these pages.I received a copy of Dimestore from LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful autobiography about growing up in Appalachia and how it became the rich substance from which she could write. Everything is so descriptive it takes you right there along side her. The chapter about her son was heartbreaking and I openly wept with her. Beautiful book.
    • 4/5
      This memoir is actually a collection of essays about Smith’s life, both her childhood in Grundy, Virginia, and her adult life in North Carolina. It is her own personal story, not an analysis of the state of the South or anything like that. But her writing shows many of the reasons people treasure their rural heritages—and the reasons some may decide to leave them behind.Grundy, where Smith grew up, is a small Appalachian town that was built on coal. It’s one of the towns that has suffered economically from the loss of that industry, so much so that town leaders asked Walmart to come in to renew the town as part of a major rebuilding project to alleviate flooding. Smith writes of the town’s evolution, expressing both sadness for what is lost and guilty pleasure in enjoying the latte she could get in the growing town’s new coffee shop. She doesn’t present any analysis of the problem or its political implications, but her mixed feelings about the changes are evident.Although for the most part, Smith’s memories of childhood in Grundy are warm with nostalgia, she doesn’t ignore the dark side of her world. Both of her parents dealt with mental illness. Her father said he was sometimes “kindly nervous,” his way of describing bipolar. William Styron’s Darkness Visible gave him great comfort. Lee Smith’s mother, too, had depression and anxiety. Both parents were hospitalized from time to time.Smith also writes about the poverty and illiteracy in the region, again connecting it with stories from her own life and those of the people around her. “Lightning Storm” is a wonderful look at people just learning to write. But then there’s “On Lou’s Porch,” about a woman who wrote wonderful stories and poems for no one but her self. The South is not just one thing, even within one small region.One of my favorite essays demonstrates the many faces of the South beautifully. Set in Carrboro, North Carolina, it uses the framework Smith’s taking an elderly lady friend to lunch at a sushi restaurant. Using this framework, she tells the story of the restaurant’s history and the people who’ve worked there.Smith’s stories also delve into her writing career, a youthful trip down the Mississippi on a raft, and the death of her son. She is a master storyteller, and I’m glad to have had this opportunity to revisit her writing.
    • 4/5
      I hadn't heard of Lee Smith before, but the description of this book sounded interesting. So, since it was the biography of an author I didn't know, the story was more about a time and place than an individual - at least for the most part. I thought when Smith kept it to the time and place around the book's title, it was fantastic. Smith's a great writer (I'll probably track down a book from her at some point). But when she delved into later life and some family tragedies, it seemed out of place with the rest of the book. It seemed the stories of her son Josh either shouldn't have been included or should have been longer. Instead, they detracted from the main thread. That kept it from being a four star for me. It's understandable that it's an important story, but it felt like it was something that was a "volume II" and was really the only misstep I saw. As for her writing talent - her descriptions really did an amazing job at painting a picture and transporting you to the world she was relating. Although it wasn't a deep look at people (with the exception of her son), there was enough to get a sense of things. I enjoyed the step back in time and recommend this book even if like me, you aren't familiar with Smith's other work.
    • 4/5
      Writers can spring from anywhere, even a seemingly nothing town like Grundy, Va. Although she grew up reading books and telling stories in Grundy, it took Lee Smith several years for this realization to hit her. Until then she had wondered what the daughter of a Ben Franklin store manager living deep in coal-mining country might possibly have to write about. Now in her 70s, the author of more than a dozen novels lives in North Carolina but keeps returning to those western Virginia mountains in her mind. That place and those people, she discovered, are virtually all she has to write about, and they are more than enough.Smith tells her story in disjointed fashion in "Dimestore: A Writer's Life," mostly a collection of magazine and newspaper articles published over the past 20 years. She describes growing up in Grundy and how, at the time at least, it seemed like paradise. She tells of being her father's "doll consultant" every year at Christmas. As a child she wanted to become a saint, or at least an angel in the Christmas pageant. Neither happened. Both of her parents suffered from bouts of severe depression, and she admits her own fears of this condition. She tells of romances, marriages, children and the tragic loss of one of those children. Mostly, however, she writes about writing and, as she puts it, "the therapeutic power of language." After the death of her son, in fact, a psychiatrist wrote a prescription for her. It said only, "Write fiction every day." It was just the therapy she neededIn one of her better essays, one called "On Lou's Front Porch," she gives one of the better definitions of writing you will find. Writing, she says, "is not about fame, or even publication. It is not about exalted language, abstract themes, or the escapades of glamorous people. It is about our own real world and our own real lives and understanding what happens to us day by day, it is about playing with children and listening to old people."
    • 4/5
      Well-known Appalachian author Lee Smith provides insights into her early years in Appalachia as well as the path she's taken since then. She shows the importance literature played in her life. She discusses when she first truly knew what it meant to write from your personal experiences. Her family had a history of psychological illnesses, and she discussed these as well. Her father owned the dimestore of the book's title although there was another manager and extended family members who ran things when he was hospitalized, which was fairly often. The author's autobiographical writings are very readable and offer insight into the world about which she wrote. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Lee Smith shares childhood memories of growing up in the Appalachians in Virginia. Her memories will spark images of childhood for many readers. This suggests that there is something universal in the thoughts and experiences that the author shares.The autobiography is laced with southern culture and charm. Lee's mother dressed in a button-down dress, heels, and an apron while preparing meals is reminiscent of the time period.Much of her story takes place in the Dimestore that was run by her father. Lee observed shoplifters, lovebirds, and fights from her dad's office window overlooking the store. This led to her eavesdropping with friends through neighbors' windows and to watching her parents jitterbugging and slow-dancing one night when they thought she was fast asleep. These observations as an "investigative reporter" became fodder for Smith's writing later in life. She was a writer-in-training at a young age earning a nickel per story.The decline of Lee Smith's home-town of Grundy is so similar to the downfall of many cities across our country whose economies are dependent upon the rise and fall of industries such as mining. Main Street stores close or are demolished. A super store replaces the hometown feel of personal service. Flooding was also an issue that contributed to the decline in Grundy.Success, obstacles, and change are issues that Lee Smith addresses in her personal observations of family, friends, and strangers. These contribute to her performance as a writer.If you enjoy reading memoirs and are attracted to the southern lifestyle, Dimestore: A Writer's Life should be an enjoyable read. Those who aspire to writing will also find the book appealing. For many, the book will bring back memories of a simpler time that was really much more complex than we realized. Dimestore would be a fantastic book club selection because readers will identify and respond to it with a variety of feelings about experiences that are common to all.
    • 5/5
      As I read about Grundy, Virginia, I was transported to the small Appalachian town in West Virginia where my husband grew up. I found myself reading joyfully about that small town, even looking it up on the internet for pictures. I also enjoyed reading about Smith's life after her childhood; I have read several of her novels, and I found the pieces in this book even more interesting as I considered them in the light of different novels. Even if you aren't a reader of Lee Smith's novels, this book gives some insight into the mind and life of a writer. If you have ever had the pleasure of going into a small town dimestore with the worn wooden floors and distinctive smell of oil and popcorn and new material, then you will find yourself right back there again.
    • 4/5
      Lee Smith is primarily familiar to me through her novels but now I am little more acquainted through this book of essays.Smith looks back on her rural childhood in Grundy, Virginia but doesn't go too deep in an autobiographical sense. She tells us a little about her family, which has its share of problems just like any other, but she doesn't wax overly nostalgic which I was afraid was going to happen after the first essay.She also explains a little about how she grew as a writer and how she has used those skills to help other people tell their stories. I liked the essays that were more about writing as a craft.If you are looking for a traditional memoir about growing up in the South this one provides just a taste. However those tastes are rich enough to set a scene so she can ease you into the rest of her story.
    • 4/5
      With a title like DIMESTORE, this book already breathes anticipation.It draws many old-timers into their own memories before even opening the book:Woolworths! Ben Franklin! Five and Ten!And while Lee Smith does deliver good stories around her Father's Dimestore, it never fully gives a real feeling of place, of actually being inside of the store. The smells, the sounds, the entry and door, the aisles, the floors, the colors and first tastes of the candy in glass cases that only opened from the back, the open wood cases of all the ??? merchandise...all this is missing.The best parts were the best Preface ever (invoking a longing and nostalgia for people and places never seen or heard of) and the author's memories of Ralph Stanley and her hero,Lou Crabtree in "On Lou's Porch."Many of the other stories seem oddly unfinished: How did she explain her absence at the presentation she'd been invited to in Dimestore? What happened after she couldn't blow out the Baked Alaska?Compared with Hillbilly Elegy, this sounds like Hillbilly Heaven > not much ignorance and where's the racism?Good quotes:"Somebody one said there are only two plots in fiction...somebody takes a trip anda stranger comes to town...." Fun to argue!"When you write fiction, you up the ante, generally speaking, since real life rarely affords enough excitement or conflict to spice up a page sufficiently."The paperback cover offers a provocative story on its own.More photographs would have been really welcome.
    • 5/5
      5* and more! "Place" is a big part of life in the south and its impact on southerners. Yet "place" can mean many different things depending on the area. Lee Smith takes you to her "place" in a remote mountain town in southwest Virginia and life as it was in the 50s. Her memories come to life with honesty and humor in this wonderful memoir. I've read several books by this author, but none compare to this one. Her childhood was fascinating with both the rough and tumble mountain life and the push both her parents gave her to leave it behind for more. We learn about depression and mental illness, family, but most of all just how important writing is to Lee Smith. It is her life's blood. I was fortunate to receive this book as an early reviewer, and I highly recommend it.
    • 4/5
      Have read a couple of books by Smith and really enjoyed them. For some reason (probably I did not read the description very carefully when choosing this book) I was not aware that it was a memoir instead of fiction, but I liked it just as much as the others of hers that I've read. It is a collection of pieces about her life, some referencing episodes or facts from other earlier chapters, but not in a tiresome repetitive way. She has had a tragic life in some respects - and it kind of came as a surprise as she went along. She could have been whiney and self-pitying (and no one could blame her), but she comes across as very pulled together and determined not to let the awful things that have happened break her spirit. I liked "Dimestore'' (about her hometown of Grundy, VA), "Recipe Box" (about her mother), "Kindly Nervous" (about her parents' mental illnesses) and "Good Bye to the Sunset Man" (about her son, Josh) the best.Quite enjoyable - even the oh so sad bits. Giving it 3.5 stars.
    • 4/5
      This is a collection of essays is gathered as memoir of author Lee Smith's life and the role her writing has played in that life. The essays begin with her childhood in Grundy, Va., a small mining town on a river surrounded by mountains. Their are stories of family, being an adolescent in the 50's, a young adult in the 60's, and her adult life including the loss of a child. I've read several of Lee Smith's books, my favorite being Fair and Tender Ladies. Her writing style shines through and her thoughts about life as a writer are illuminating.
    • 5/5
      I have never read any of Lee Smith’s novels, but I have a read a few minor things written by her. I am not sure why this is, but when I received an advanced readers copy of her memoir, Dimestore, -- her first work of non-fiction -- I decided to discover what I was missing. And I was missing a lot! She is a clever, smooth, and interesting writer, and this memoir became so much more than a story of her growing up and becoming a writer. The first part of the book covers that, but the later chapters examine the writer in herself and how a reader can apply that to her daily writings.According to the dust jacket, Lee – who lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina -- began to write stories at the age of nine and sold them for a nickel each. As an adult she has 17 works of fiction and has won numerous awards, including “an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel The Last Girls was a New York Times best seller and won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She talked a lot about this book, and I think I will get a copy of that novel next.Lee talks about her early desire to be a writer, and the autobiographical nature of one of her characters. She writes, “Although I Don’t usually write autobiographical fiction, the main character in one of my short stories sounds suspiciously like the girl I used to be: ‘More than anything else in the world, I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t want to learn to write, of course. I just wanted to be a writer, and I often picture myself poised at the foggy edge of a cliff someplace in the south of France, wearing a cape, drawing furiously on a long cigarette, hollow-cheeked and haunted. I had been romantically dedicated to the grand idea of “being a writer” ever since I could remember” (63). Lee was lucky to have discovered her passion so early and had the grit and the talent to carry through to success.Lee tells a story about meeting an elderly woman who loved to write, and, as Smith found out, she had stumbled on a truly talented writer. One day, they went for a walk in rural Virginia. She writes, “‘Here honey,’ she said, leaning over to pick up a buck eye as we walked back beneath the sunset sky. ‘Put this in your pocket. It’s good luck. And get your head out of them clouds, honey. Pay attention.’ We went back to sit on her porch, talking to everybody that came by. We had potato chips and Moon Pies for dinner. // I’ve been trying to pay attention ever since, realizing that writing is not about fame, or even publication. It is not about exalted language, abstract themes, or the escapades of glamorous people. It is about our own real world and our own real lives and understanding what happens to us day by day, it is about playing with children and listening to old people” (91).This pleasant memoir is as enjoyable as a memoir can be. If you are interested in all the ins and outs for the art and craft of writing, Lee Smith’s Dimestore, is a great place to begin your own journey. We all have stories we share all the time. Get yourself a pencil or a pen or a computer, sit down, and write. 5 stars--Jim, 8/1/16
    • 4/5
      Thoroughly enjoyable memoir of growing up in Appalachian Virginia, with parents who were "kindly nervous" and Smith's development of herself as an author. Although I grew up in the "urban" rather than rural South, Smith really captured some truths about my own experience as a Southerner.
    • 4/5
      Lee Smith grew up in a small Virginia town in the mountains of Appalachia. Her mother was a former school teacher and her dad was the owner of the town dimestore. Lee loved Grundy and all the people who lived there, but she was "raised to leave" and didn't live in Grundy beyond her high school years.This is not a sentimental account but rather a collection of essays that show how a small town upbringing and Southern culture created a writer. Now in her seventies, Lee has written an unflinching account of a life that always had writing (and reading) at it's core.
    • 2/5
      I didn't really enjoymany of the stories in this book. I felt like this was more about her previous books more than anything. I also didn't like how she listed things over and over. Disappointed.
    • 5/5
      Delightful. These short stoies reminded me of my own visits to our local "Dimestore" in Western MA.
    • 3/5
      Wasn't a book that I could get interested in and didn't finish it
    • 3/5
      Over the years I have read almost all of Lee Smith's novels and enjoyed them so much! This memoir made it easy to put the face with all those words and to learn what it was like for her growing up in the Appalachian Mountains and her time spent with her father at the dimestore he owned. Writing was her salvation and her whole life centered around listening to her family and friends and the stories they told. A very good autobiography told in short stories.
    • 5/5
      I received this through the early reviewers program.I haven't read any of Lee Smith's other books, but I'm certainly interested now. I thought this was a lovely, endearing, plainspoken group of stories that were so easy to keep turning the page and reading. There are always a few stories that resonate less than others (for me, I didn't care for the final chapter which was kind of a disappointing way to end the book). The story about her son Josh and the writer Lou Crabtree might have been my favorites.
    • 5/5
      Lee Smith weaves a web around a town so deftly that you feel you must have been born there too. Her stories of Grundy in Appalachia are raw yet heartwarming. The characters seem to be people that you know and love. My favorite story was about Lou Crabtree, a downhome writer who lived her craft. Her description of her writing time is priceless and echoes the feelings of creative people in all genres. A spirited woman, she became an inspiration to the author and has much wisdom to share.Smith's accounts of her hometown bring to light the essence of what it means to be human, living with other humans. All readers can relate, and will enjoy reading this masterful collection of stories.
    • 4/5
      Lee Smith has a written a wonderful book full of short stories. These stories tell all about growing up in Appalachia and the people, customs, and happenings that took place then. She talks about how this has shaped her as a person and an author even though her mother tried to make sure she turned out with a little more class. She loved growing up in the hills and hollars, spying on neighbors or sitting in her Daddy's dimestore and then writing stories from what she learned. This practice would get her in trouble on more than one occasion. Because I live in Appalachia I find the book to be memory inducing. This look at small town life and how those that have lived and live it are shaped by their communities, the "talk", the "bubble" if you will is a voice that needs to be heard.I received this book for the purpose of review.