Bequeath: Essays

by Melora Wolff

What should we do with the things we inherit? In ten intimate essays as vivid as fiction and as varied as music, Melora Wolff's Bequeath presents a flawed, funny, impressionable narrator who tries to solve the mysteries of bequeathed artifacts, family myths, and haunting mistakes--while also figuring out how to grow up in dangerous, glamorous 1970s New York City.

With a wide range of voices--comic, lyric, collective, personal, joyful, and deeply elegiac--Wolff pays homage to her musician father and family as she roams a past rich with cultural touchstones and indelible characters, from West Side Story and Lost in Space to Leonard Bernstein and Gloria Steinem. Bequeath explores the legacies we impose and bestow on one another.

Genres: Essays

180 pages, Paperback

Published September 13, 2024

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite from start to finish. A gem of a book guaranteed to stand the test of time.
As a sidenote, while the cover photograph is perfect, Bequeth deserves to be re-issued in a beautifully designed limited hardcover edition, quality of the exterior matching what’s on the inside (think of all the drivel published in hardcover, arggg!) And what a film it would make if someone like Sally Potter or Alice Rohrwacher got their hands on it!

[Maitreya Ravenstar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous prose with so much love embedded in it