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You're Not Edith: Autobiographical Essays
This gutsy collection offers a brilliant reflection on life as a young lesbian and breast cancer survivor. Through discussions of madness, religion, gender and feminism, Gruber captivates with heartbreaking candor and wit. From her teenage Dian Fossey to her Virginia Woolf of Drama Club, Gruber invites us into a world of brash, bookish hilarity, as she navigates an unusual life, interrupted. In You re Not Edith, Gruber asks herself how best to live and finds answers big enough for all of us."
135 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 6, 2015
excellent
December 30, 2017
Allison Gruber continues to amaze me with her boundless wit and draws beautiful connections between life experiences a lesser author would struggle to ascribe depth to. She develops her own character in such a way that illuminates both a lovably raw human pain and an intellectual questioning of the strange synchronicities and eccentricities of the human experience. Her work is so ultimately herself it would be hard not to love it.
February 16, 2016
Here lives a human. Breathing, fearing, loving. She exists in these tiny moments that accrue into an uncertain end. But in the midst of uncertainty, Allison Gruber tells the reader that it will be okay.
In , the small experiences matter most. The reader hears records playing from a father's rom. It's not what it seems. Bears the silence of a drama-club student before a moment of triumph. Sees the brown eyes of a person who cared enough to laugh. What Gruber does so well in this memoir is threading these small moments in such a way that the friction between them compels the reader to understand and feel what it means to be uncertain or scared or loved.
Gruber is at the forefront of creative non-fiction's momentum, where the boundaries between genres fade, and all that remains is the power of language and storytelling. At the edge of creative writing, telling it straight does not suffice. As Gruber says, "at some point the cold facts are too much to bear, so you conjure up the metaphors, the tropes" (86). Those tiny moments laid before the reader are greater than the sum of their parts, more meaningful than they could ever be if they were simply "relatable."
My only complaint with this book is minor. At some moments, when the story necessitates some simple exposition, the syntax muddles itself on my tongue, but that is often the nature of exposition. Such sentences are few and far between. They are noticeable, but fail to harm the beauty of Gruber's metaphors, the play and reimagining of phrases integral to each essay. I have never been a woman, a lesbian, a breast cancer survivor, but from Gruber's experiences, I am a more enriched human. And that, I say, is well worth the read.
In , the small experiences matter most. The reader hears records playing from a father's rom. It's not what it seems. Bears the silence of a drama-club student before a moment of triumph. Sees the brown eyes of a person who cared enough to laugh. What Gruber does so well in this memoir is threading these small moments in such a way that the friction between them compels the reader to understand and feel what it means to be uncertain or scared or loved.
Gruber is at the forefront of creative non-fiction's momentum, where the boundaries between genres fade, and all that remains is the power of language and storytelling. At the edge of creative writing, telling it straight does not suffice. As Gruber says, "at some point the cold facts are too much to bear, so you conjure up the metaphors, the tropes" (86). Those tiny moments laid before the reader are greater than the sum of their parts, more meaningful than they could ever be if they were simply "relatable."
My only complaint with this book is minor. At some moments, when the story necessitates some simple exposition, the syntax muddles itself on my tongue, but that is often the nature of exposition. Such sentences are few and far between. They are noticeable, but fail to harm the beauty of Gruber's metaphors, the play and reimagining of phrases integral to each essay. I have never been a woman, a lesbian, a breast cancer survivor, but from Gruber's experiences, I am a more enriched human. And that, I say, is well worth the read.
August 12, 2015
Allison's memoir of life as a young lesbian and breast cancer survivor is at once heart-wrenching and darkly comical, thanks to her captivatingly stark voice and arresting honesty. Her detailed experiences range from transforming into a conventionally feminine alter ego at a friend's wedding, uncomfortably dealing with sexism in the teaching profession, and spontaneously adopting a puppy in the midst of cancer treatment. Allison touches on issues of feminism, gender expression, sexual identity, religion, family, and more, and her stories are bound to spark tears and laughs of varying degrees.
April 20, 2015
I really enjoyed Allison's voice throughout her essays. I truly did laugh, tear up, and find myself remembering similar experiences in my own life. She has a smooth, crisp writing style and a way with comparisons and turns of phrase that really pulls the reader in. I'm looking forward to reading more of her work.
September 2, 2015
Probably wouldn't have picked it up had I noticed the subtitle of "autobiographical essays" (I thought it was short stories). Never one to traffic in identity politics, this book was not for me. However, it did finish stronger than it started. Which may be damning it with faint praise but that is not really my intention.
February 5, 2016
Enjoyable, funny read, surprisingly about cancer and survival.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews