What do you think?
Rate this book
Stone Soup: Morsels of an Unsettled Life
More than twenty years ago, Anita Lobel published her childhood memoir, NO PRETTY PICTURES, to much acclaim. A child's tale of surviving Hitler's Poland, a rescue by the Swedish Red Cross in 1945, and ending with school years in Stockholm, that book was written in a young girl's voice. NO PRETTY PICTURES was nominated for the National Book Award, received gratifying reviews, and sold extremely well. Now, these many years later, she has decided to tell the rest of her story.
STONE SOUP is an adult memento which begins in the early 1950s with an unwanted transplantation to New York City, then grows into a new rescue with acceptance to art school, the discovery of new friends and the proper marriage to one of those friends who happens to be a creator of children's books. That is followed by the birth of children, income from satisfying work as a designer and illustrator, and a growing sense of having arrived at a point on the path to shedding the dual stigmas of poverty and exile.
The trust in the good marriage turns out to last, until it doesn't. Its gradual dissolution begins with the impulsive acquisition of a status house on a status street in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In a series of segments, the delight and playfulness connected with the ownership of this house lead to fear and trembling, suspicions and magical thinking that evil dwells and breathes in the old walls of that too, too solid house, and reflects back on the life lived within them.
The "ideal" husband's secrets and betrayals can no longer be ignored, and the door to the couple's charmed, elegant life is broken down for good.
Eventually, the husband contracts the plague of the eighties, and their relationship reshapes itself. In separate apartments very near each other in lower Manhattan, the husband and wife become a sad and changed couple. But as the husband descends into the inevitable, a fairy tale ending presents itself to the wife, and her road to recovery begins.
STONE SOUP is a raw, yet engaging work of autofiction that will appeal to readers of literary fiction and memoirs, to all those fascinated by power couples of the publishing world, and to readers of NO PRETTY PICTURES who will, surely, want to know how it all arrives at this moment.
STONE SOUP is an adult memento which begins in the early 1950s with an unwanted transplantation to New York City, then grows into a new rescue with acceptance to art school, the discovery of new friends and the proper marriage to one of those friends who happens to be a creator of children's books. That is followed by the birth of children, income from satisfying work as a designer and illustrator, and a growing sense of having arrived at a point on the path to shedding the dual stigmas of poverty and exile.
The trust in the good marriage turns out to last, until it doesn't. Its gradual dissolution begins with the impulsive acquisition of a status house on a status street in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In a series of segments, the delight and playfulness connected with the ownership of this house lead to fear and trembling, suspicions and magical thinking that evil dwells and breathes in the old walls of that too, too solid house, and reflects back on the life lived within them.
The "ideal" husband's secrets and betrayals can no longer be ignored, and the door to the couple's charmed, elegant life is broken down for good.
Eventually, the husband contracts the plague of the eighties, and their relationship reshapes itself. In separate apartments very near each other in lower Manhattan, the husband and wife become a sad and changed couple. But as the husband descends into the inevitable, a fairy tale ending presents itself to the wife, and her road to recovery begins.
STONE SOUP is a raw, yet engaging work of autofiction that will appeal to readers of literary fiction and memoirs, to all those fascinated by power couples of the publishing world, and to readers of NO PRETTY PICTURES who will, surely, want to know how it all arrives at this moment.
300 pages, Hardcover
Published November 18, 2022
About the author
Anita Lobel
90 books30 followersAnita Lobel is an illustrator of children's books. Her memoir that depicts her childhood of flight and imprisonment in Nazi-occupied Poland, ''No Pretty Pictures'' was a finalist for the National Book Award.
She has also received the Caldecott Honor Medal.
She has also received the Caldecott Honor Medal.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 9, 2025
I read "No Pretty Pictures" and wanted to find out what happened to Anita Lobel after she came to America with her parents. To my surprise, I found she had written a book a couple years ago about the rest of her life. Unfortunately it was not as interesting as the first book. I suggest you read the Wikipedia version of her life and save yourself some time. Her autobiography of life after coming to America is long, tedious, and not very interesting. I would have liked to have read about her artistic work (she has been quite successful), challenges with language, culture, etc after she arrived. What happened to her parents and her brother who was never even mentioned? They were inseparable growing up and now not a mention in her adult life. Instead, I read about her ungratefulness to her parents for bringing her to America, her drawn out story of her unfaithful, homosexual husband and all she does for him even after he leaves her, her sexual exploits with random men in bars, then finally reconnecting with a half broken man she met and slightly dallied with while she was married. Needless to say, I did a lot of skimming and the book was a disappointment. It definitely was and sounds like a full life. She just had difficult telling her audience about it in a way they would find interesting.
Displaying 1 of 1 review