Close Quarters

by Amy Monticello

Close Quarters, a memoir, reaffirms that love doesn't always end when a marriage does. In the dim, acrid haze of smoke and booze, this broken family repair their seams, indulge or overindulge their collective penchant for nostalgia, and examine the hurt even love can't prevent.

67 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Amy Monticello is the author of two collections of nonfiction. Her essays have been published or are forthcoming in Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, The Iron Horse Literary Review, The Rumpus, Brain, Child Magazine, Hotel Amerika,, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston, MA, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

Reviews

[Marissa Landrigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have far too much to say about what this collection does, for love, for nonfiction, for the chapbook genre. See more here: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/ml...

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lovely book of short stories makes you want to meet the author, to sit down with her over a cup of tea and get to know her and then to have the chance to introduce her to your entire book club. Her writing is elegant and she tells the inelegant story of her family with compassionate grace. Read this book and then read it again.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is so amazing about thus book is not Monticello's compassionate portrait of her complex parents--though it is a lovely and loving portrait--but the way in which she models for all if us a new way to see our own complex families, our own difficult selves. A real triumph of what memoir can do, but too seldom does: let's us see a new way of knowing.

[Jeremy Williams]

Not sure if this book was ever printed in book format buy I've been look iij ng. I'll buy any hard copy available. Thanks.

[Raizel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amy describes emotions with such accurate wording and original thought. Often times while reading I'd stop to admire the word choice and poetic stringing together of her thoughts. She writes about a side of divorce and relationships not generally discussed openly, and does so in such a way that everything feels natural. The book is like reading a candid scrapbook, as everything is pieced together in vignettes with vivid description. It's a look inside one family's world, and while it is a very personal telling, we can all relate to the character triumphs and flaws.