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The Stuff of Life
When Karen Karbo's father, a charming, taciturn Clint Eastwood type who lives in a triple-wide in the Nevada desert, is diagnosed with lung cancer, his only daughter rises to the challenge of caring for him. Neither of them is exactly cut out for the job. As Dick Karbo's disease progresses, Karen finds herself sometimes the responsible adult, sometimes a stubborn teenager all over again. But in the end, what father and daughter discover more than anything is the love and the toughness that makes them alike.
224 pages, Paperback
First published December 11, 2008
2 people are currently reading
143 people want to read
About the author
Karen Karbo
34 books225 followersKaren Karbo's first novel, Trespassers Welcome Here, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Village Voice Top Ten Book of the Year. Her other two adult novels, The Diamond Lane and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me, were also named New York Times Notable Books. The Stuff of Life, about the last year she spent with her father before his death, was an NYT Notable Book, a People Magazine Critics' Choice, a Books for a Better Life Award finalist, and a winner of the Oregon Book Award for Creative Non-fiction.
Karbo is most well known for her international best-selling Kick Ass Women series, which examines the lives of a quartet of iconic 20th century women. Julia Child Rules (2013), How Georgia Became O'Keeffe (2011), The Gospel According to Coco Chanel (2009), and How to Hepburn (2007)
Her short stories, essays, articles and reviews have appeared in Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Outside, O, More, The New Republic, The New York Times, salon.com and other magazines. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, was a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award, and was one of 24 writers chosen for the inaugural Amtrak Writers residency.
In addition, Karbo penned three books in the Minerva Clark mystery series for children: Minerva Clark Gets A Clue, Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs, and Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost.
She is the co-author, with Gabrielle Reece, of Big Girl in the Middle, and the New York Times bestselling, My Foot is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less than Perfect Life.
Karbo also contributed to the anthologies, The Bitch is Back and What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most.
Karen grew up in Los Angeles, California and lives in Portland, Oregon where she continues to kick ass.
Karbo is most well known for her international best-selling Kick Ass Women series, which examines the lives of a quartet of iconic 20th century women. Julia Child Rules (2013), How Georgia Became O'Keeffe (2011), The Gospel According to Coco Chanel (2009), and How to Hepburn (2007)
Her short stories, essays, articles and reviews have appeared in Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Outside, O, More, The New Republic, The New York Times, salon.com and other magazines. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, was a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award, and was one of 24 writers chosen for the inaugural Amtrak Writers residency.
In addition, Karbo penned three books in the Minerva Clark mystery series for children: Minerva Clark Gets A Clue, Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs, and Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost.
She is the co-author, with Gabrielle Reece, of Big Girl in the Middle, and the New York Times bestselling, My Foot is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less than Perfect Life.
Karbo also contributed to the anthologies, The Bitch is Back and What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most.
Karen grew up in Los Angeles, California and lives in Portland, Oregon where she continues to kick ass.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 21, 2014
I found this book for a quarter at a book sale. I so enjoyed Karen’s writing. Each sentence has a density, and gravitational pull all it's own. She is verbose in so many ways, and yet taut in so many others.
Karen tells, and tells, and tells how tough she is . Re-telling the story of how a kid once graffitied a wall that said "You could punch Karen Karbo and she doesn't even cry." I mean pages reminding us of that and yet, when we finally get to her beloved Dad's death- it is just a few scant pages. Now I did not want gory details. I am on this journey of my own, but I would have liked more of a description of the emotional landscape once you got there.
What I loved about Karen is sharing what an asshat she was while her dad passed. We all think we will step up ready for our Lifetime movie close-up of good behaviors and saintly acts. Sadly, my experience was I did the weirdest shit. Some of it I knew was weird, but felt like I was caught in a tide I couldn’t find my way out of. Other things I did or said felt like the most normal behavior in the world until I looked back on it and thought maybe I had been abducted by aliens. Karen letting me glimpse into her crazy made me feel better about mine. Like somehow I had found my grieving buddy.
It is so easy to look into another’s life while they are trying to deal with dysfunctional family (or what I like to call just ‘family”), impending death, a dad who is reticent regarding his health and medical decisions, trying to honor memories and lives and beliefs that have drove us insane for 20 or 50 years, all while figuring our way across the broken dangerous terrain of saying goodbye. It is easy to judge watching from the outside. Or feel like we could have done better.
Trust me, you will do worse when it’s your turn. And in the end it will still be all ok. Because walking our beloved’s to their end- is a journey with no “You are Here!” map. We do the best with what we have.
Karen Karbo shared her sweet and painful and insane and comforting story of doing the best with what she had. I am so grateful she did.
**One of my favorite lines:
After her Dad dies and she and her step-brother are trying to get the house cleaned out.
"There have been many recent calamities, but this one looms largest: The damn coffee grinder is missing."
Karen is one funny broad.
Karen tells, and tells, and tells how tough she is . Re-telling the story of how a kid once graffitied a wall that said "You could punch Karen Karbo and she doesn't even cry." I mean pages reminding us of that and yet, when we finally get to her beloved Dad's death- it is just a few scant pages. Now I did not want gory details. I am on this journey of my own, but I would have liked more of a description of the emotional landscape once you got there.
What I loved about Karen is sharing what an asshat she was while her dad passed. We all think we will step up ready for our Lifetime movie close-up of good behaviors and saintly acts. Sadly, my experience was I did the weirdest shit. Some of it I knew was weird, but felt like I was caught in a tide I couldn’t find my way out of. Other things I did or said felt like the most normal behavior in the world until I looked back on it and thought maybe I had been abducted by aliens. Karen letting me glimpse into her crazy made me feel better about mine. Like somehow I had found my grieving buddy.
It is so easy to look into another’s life while they are trying to deal with dysfunctional family (or what I like to call just ‘family”), impending death, a dad who is reticent regarding his health and medical decisions, trying to honor memories and lives and beliefs that have drove us insane for 20 or 50 years, all while figuring our way across the broken dangerous terrain of saying goodbye. It is easy to judge watching from the outside. Or feel like we could have done better.
Trust me, you will do worse when it’s your turn. And in the end it will still be all ok. Because walking our beloved’s to their end- is a journey with no “You are Here!” map. We do the best with what we have.
Karen Karbo shared her sweet and painful and insane and comforting story of doing the best with what she had. I am so grateful she did.
**One of my favorite lines:
After her Dad dies and she and her step-brother are trying to get the house cleaned out.
"There have been many recent calamities, but this one looms largest: The damn coffee grinder is missing."
Karen is one funny broad.
July 16, 2019
What a wonderful read and what a kind person the author is. She describes her time with her dying father with such elegance and compassion that you feel it is a privilege to witness their last months together. Especially recommended for the millions of us dealing with aging relatives and wondering how to do so with sanity and grace. 5/5
February 27, 2019
The Stuff Of A Good Book.
I laughed out loud and not from the confines of a straitjacket. I loved this book. It’s just the kind of book that makes me want to write my own book. Funny as hell, and emotionally helpful for a daughter or (or step-son) that has lost a parent. Not lost, actually, for that would a mystery. Rather, the story will resonate for any observational type of child who has been there in fully human form as their father dies. Very nicely written. Brava, Ms. Karbo...you old alumni, you.
I laughed out loud and not from the confines of a straitjacket. I loved this book. It’s just the kind of book that makes me want to write my own book. Funny as hell, and emotionally helpful for a daughter or (or step-son) that has lost a parent. Not lost, actually, for that would a mystery. Rather, the story will resonate for any observational type of child who has been there in fully human form as their father dies. Very nicely written. Brava, Ms. Karbo...you old alumni, you.
August 26, 2023
Karbo knows the craft of writing well and it is particularly apparent with this touching and at times humorous examination of what it is like to watch your strong and stoic father slowly fail. As another "daddy's girl" who lost her father to a brutal lung disease, many of her observations and descriptions resonated. There's an edginess to Karbo's writing that I like - she's intelligent and comes across as scrappy, not one to back down from a fight. I think anyone whose parent's death is imminent or who has recently lost a parent will find this book particularly poignant.
April 3, 2025
I loved this book! Reminded me of an American version of Crying in H-mart. I picked up this book on a whim from a thrift store. I didn’t read it for months because I worried it would hit too close to home and leave me feeling depressed. The way Karen turns grief into comedy and happy memories is amazing. Enjoyed every moment of the book.
September 16, 2025
You gotta laugh and you gotta cry. Beautifully written.
August 14, 2009
The Stuff of Life is a memoir by journalist Karen Karbo, who unflinchingly and honestly recounts the death of her dad from lung cancer. It is a struggle for her to take care of her father, a tough, hardened cowboy who collects guns and definitely does not make the ideal patient. He continues to smoke a pack a day despite his diagnosis. Karbo also struggles to balance her own home life in Oregon (the primary breadwinner for five kids and a slacker husband) while shuttling herself in between Portland and Boulder City, a town just outside Las Vegas with scorching temperatures. I don’t think I ever felt sorry for her though, because she never turned the story into a “pity party” or sappy t.v. movie. She emphasized her families’ dysfunction and I often found myself thinking, “I don’t know if I would ever admit that.” It made for a very genuine story and a funny one at that. It wasn’t life-changing or profound but some observations about death were new for me. Her exploration of the father-daughter dynamic was interesting. He was mysterious and unpredictable, not in a wild out-of-control way-but in a I-could-never-really-figure-him-out way. I thought the pacing of the book was a little strange, it seemed she detailed the slow progression into sickness but then skipped through the actual death and aftermath.
Some language that bugged, hence the rating.
Favorite Quotes:
“Daniel had been publicly humiliated, but he was not one to bear a grudge, even the kind of minor ones that are the basis for much family hostility.”
“But he can’t do the one thing I would love him to do more than anything else: feel the way I do.
Some language that bugged, hence the rating.
Favorite Quotes:
“Daniel had been publicly humiliated, but he was not one to bear a grudge, even the kind of minor ones that are the basis for much family hostility.”
“But he can’t do the one thing I would love him to do more than anything else: feel the way I do.
August 2, 2015
Having read Karbo's series on exception women, I was eager to try some of her other work. And given my profession as an estate planning and probate attorney who has also outlived both her parents, I hoped this book would hold some useful gems. It was not what I expected,but that is not to say it was bad, just a reminder not to set expectations.
The book was more journal than memoir. It starts with not her father's diagnosis, but rather the death of her step=mother. Odd it seems, but upon reflection she may have seen this as the start of the end. Long-married couples often have declines at the same time. Her honesty in the book was refreshing; she was not the model child from a Lifetime movie. Reading what she went through was challenging for me: I wanted to scream "get a social worker involved, get yourself a therapist!".
At the end she reveals what I see as a bombshell related to opening a fireproof box and her parents past. Had I written her story, I would have started here, went back to the diagnosis, and ended with more on how she deals with the information she found in the fireproof box. Make it more a circle, a journey, rather than a year in a life. But that is just me.
Happy I have read this, and plan to read at least three more of her books in 2016.
The book was more journal than memoir. It starts with not her father's diagnosis, but rather the death of her step=mother. Odd it seems, but upon reflection she may have seen this as the start of the end. Long-married couples often have declines at the same time. Her honesty in the book was refreshing; she was not the model child from a Lifetime movie. Reading what she went through was challenging for me: I wanted to scream "get a social worker involved, get yourself a therapist!".
At the end she reveals what I see as a bombshell related to opening a fireproof box and her parents past. Had I written her story, I would have started here, went back to the diagnosis, and ended with more on how she deals with the information she found in the fireproof box. Make it more a circle, a journey, rather than a year in a life. But that is just me.
Happy I have read this, and plan to read at least three more of her books in 2016.
May 17, 2008
I loved this book. Couldn't put it down and hated finishing it. Her dad and step mother lived out in the boonies in a trailor in the desert, chained smoked, had their martooni hour while living hermetic lives.
Once the step mom passes away the author goes to visit her dad and soon things take a turn for the worse. She spares no one the sad details of what it is like to deal with an ill parent but she also stays clear of all pity. This was a touching and yet humorous story that at times left me incredulous.
Once the step mom passes away the author goes to visit her dad and soon things take a turn for the worse. She spares no one the sad details of what it is like to deal with an ill parent but she also stays clear of all pity. This was a touching and yet humorous story that at times left me incredulous.
February 22, 2015
There is something truly effortless about the way Karbo tells this tale of a time in her life that was anything but. How does she know just when to crack the joke? When to assume you get it? When to know she has to go deeper for you? For herself? Her pain is spoon fed in a way that makes it almost sweet to experience. You will relate, or you will be as prepared as you can be.
Most writers will spend their careers trying to cast off something as fully realized as TSoL.
Most writers will spend their careers trying to cast off something as fully realized as TSoL.
January 27, 2016
The voice of experience with a smart mouth. A tender, exasperating, awful and yes, funny memoir of a 40-something woman caring for her dying father. Her writing pulls you right in to the experience. She has the failings of mind and spirit we all have and related them honestly. I could really relate! If her novels are anything like this book, I want to read them.
December 22, 2007
I met this author at Wordstock. She is an interesting lady. Chandler got a picture with her and her ferret.
February 25, 2012
A touching, hilarious memoir.....loving.
November 9, 2012
girls: just keep your pants on.
August 27, 2014
I had this on my shelf for years because I thought it might be a "downer." Not so! Karen Karbo's memoir will be counted among my favorites. I loved the humor and the humanity of it.
March 9, 2015
Karbo's account of dealing with the decline and passing of her Dad, and in typical Karbo style, she combines sadness with incredible wit and insight. A wonderful read!
April 7, 2016
Lovely book.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews