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Space
A true story about growing up in the space-age 1960s invites readers into the author's life, from her days spent watching rocket launches in Florida, to her mother's addiction to Valium. Reprint.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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148 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 21, 2012
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
This book is sooooo good. I usually don't like reading for school because there is soooo much books that I really want to read BUT this is a story that I will not forget. It is really touching and sad. She is living in a horrible environment but learns how to push through alone, without even family support, if you have to read a book (memoir) for school I STRONGLY SUGGEST this one! And if you are just looking for something to read I STRONGLY SUGGEST this one because it is very interesting and real girls could relate to it. SPACE is a great memoir even though it isn't about the future and doesn't have fantasy characters I hope you consider reading SPACE... p.s. just like any other girl looking for a book to read, i wasn't exited to read any memoir but I ended up really enjoying it.
SCHOOL REVIEW:
Space is a touching story, it makes you laugh and cry. One girl, growing up in Flordia tracks the space program's process as she alone tries to surrvive everyday life with a mom who has already given up on the world, a dad who is always working, and a sister who may still hold a little hope. This book is very interesting and connects to regular girls well but it starts off a little boring. The intriging details of a real story pull you in and don't let you go. Teens and tweens can appreciate the funny but moving and engaging story. I highly reccomend this book. I gave it 5 stars because I really enjoyed it. I think that a middle school or high school girl would like this book best.
This book is sooooo good. I usually don't like reading for school because there is soooo much books that I really want to read BUT this is a story that I will not forget. It is really touching and sad. She is living in a horrible environment but learns how to push through alone, without even family support, if you have to read a book (memoir) for school I STRONGLY SUGGEST this one! And if you are just looking for something to read I STRONGLY SUGGEST this one because it is very interesting and real girls could relate to it. SPACE is a great memoir even though it isn't about the future and doesn't have fantasy characters I hope you consider reading SPACE... p.s. just like any other girl looking for a book to read, i wasn't exited to read any memoir but I ended up really enjoying it.
SCHOOL REVIEW:
Space is a touching story, it makes you laugh and cry. One girl, growing up in Flordia tracks the space program's process as she alone tries to surrvive everyday life with a mom who has already given up on the world, a dad who is always working, and a sister who may still hold a little hope. This book is very interesting and connects to regular girls well but it starts off a little boring. The intriging details of a real story pull you in and don't let you go. Teens and tweens can appreciate the funny but moving and engaging story. I highly reccomend this book. I gave it 5 stars because I really enjoyed it. I think that a middle school or high school girl would like this book best.
December 15, 2014
I loved, loved, loved this girlhood memoir of a former University of Wisconsin Creative Writing professor of mine, Jesse Lee Kercheval! Set against the backdrop of 60s and 70s Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the space program, Kercheval's coming-of-age is relatable, at times humorous and then tragic, and full of heart.
March 10, 2015
Loved the stories. Loved the style of writing. Amazed by her memory of her childhood. Plan to check out more books by this author.
June 26, 2019
Sometimes the power of a memoir is its glimpse into the character of the writer, showing something about who they are and how they became the person they are. Other memoirs are windows into a particular place and time. This one feels more like the latter. This isn't to say that we don't learn interesting things and powerful lessons from the author's experiences, but in many ways, this book is a time capsule, a look back at a particular time in American history and culture, a reminder of where and what we were.
At the height of the Space Race, the author's family moved from the Washington, DC suburbs to Cocoa, Florida, adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center. Her father, a retired army officer, took a position with the local community college, where he immerses himself in his work. Her mother, a former WAC officer, was not enthusiastic about this move, and slowly withdraws, first into bottles of bourbon, and eventually into bottles of Valium. The author and her older sister are left, to a large degree, to fend for themselves.
The author provides a glory of details about coming of age next to the epicenter of the Space Race as it comes to its climax. We confront the gender and racial biases of the period as the author tries to understand the morality of these issues, even as the greater culture also struggles with the same issues. There is something almost tragic about much of this story, but in the end, things seemed to work out reasonably well, if not entirely happily for everyone. But for the glimpse back at everyday life in the shadow of the Space Race, this book is a wonderful read.
At the height of the Space Race, the author's family moved from the Washington, DC suburbs to Cocoa, Florida, adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center. Her father, a retired army officer, took a position with the local community college, where he immerses himself in his work. Her mother, a former WAC officer, was not enthusiastic about this move, and slowly withdraws, first into bottles of bourbon, and eventually into bottles of Valium. The author and her older sister are left, to a large degree, to fend for themselves.
The author provides a glory of details about coming of age next to the epicenter of the Space Race as it comes to its climax. We confront the gender and racial biases of the period as the author tries to understand the morality of these issues, even as the greater culture also struggles with the same issues. There is something almost tragic about much of this story, but in the end, things seemed to work out reasonably well, if not entirely happily for everyone. But for the glimpse back at everyday life in the shadow of the Space Race, this book is a wonderful read.
December 15, 2019
i bought an old paperback copy of this novel for 10 cents on the last day of a friends of the library sale in gainesville, fl. it was purchased on a lark, because it looked like it might be interesting, in spite of the fact i had never heard of the book or the author. sometimes we get lucky. in this case, i was very lucky. this book is all about me - growing up awkward and weird with a family that doesn't make sense, on the coast of florida in the 1970s. the writing is poignant, illuminating, and nuanced yet still accessible. thank you, jesse lee kercheval, for this gem. this is writing i'll carry with me for years to come.
April 3, 2019
I finished this book a while back, but what I enjoyed the most was to see how the term "space" got applied in multiple ways (at least in my opinion). Jesse has an amazing story that intertwines interestingly with the time period and shows how her love for rockets and the triumph of women (including herself) coalesce.
February 6, 2023
Came across this beautiful memoir when it was first published in 98. Read while visiting MIL in Cocoa, proving to me at least that time and space are often, “A big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff". I enjoyed the memoir and now plan to reread it and read the author's new book of poetry “I WANT TO TELL YOU”.
May 8, 2017
Remember when you wanted to be the first woman astronaut? Background set in Cocoa Beach starting with the Gemini program then finishing with Sally Ride. A memoir girl growing up with a messed up mom who is looking at the "Yellow Wallpaper," a victim of her time and circumstance.
February 10, 2018
A really good read; I love memoirs and this one has been added to mental & physical shelf of favorites. Very glad I spotted it and took a chance on it.
From one Jessi (Jesse) to another -it’s a fantastic book.
From one Jessi (Jesse) to another -it’s a fantastic book.
May 19, 2022
Good, some parts funny, some depressing.
April 1, 2015
What I love about this memoir is that at first it’s deceptively simple and sweet. You think you’re going to get a coming of age story of a girl living in a bedroom community of rocket scientists. She is precocious and vividly aware of her exotic surroundings, which makes us laugh and remember what it was like to be nine years old, when the world was so full of possibilities and we were convinced people would be living on Mars by the time we went to high school. Jesse’s biggest concern seems to be whether her father will buy her a souvenir.
The early parts are so funny and tender that we almost don’t notice the darkness, like an undertow, lurking beneath. Jesse almost drowns and her parents don’t even notice (and her main response is disappointment that her life didn’t flash in front of her—probably, she concludes, because she hadn’t lived enough of it yet). Her father takes refuge at work, and her mother is more distant than the moon: “If I started into some confession, some betrayal of emotion that struck her as altogether too personal, I knew it without her saying a word. Her smile would shut off as if she had suddenly left her body, the table, me. I imagined her floating near the ceiling, fingers in her spirit ears, humming The Stars and Stripes Forever to keep from hearing a word I said. Only when I stopped, my story dying away without a middle or an end, would she drift down and rejoin her still-seated body, smile, and ask me what I wanted for dessert.”
Then comes the darkest part: “For reasons I didn’t understand and no one seemed willing to explain to me, Mother was spending most of each day in bed.”
This is the story of children having to raise themselves, even while their parents are still alive. Carole, Jesse’s senior by two years, emerges as the hero, the mother-substitute. Like the best memoir, this one is written with a light hand, the humor and the empathy for all the flawed characters keeping the prose buoyant and fresh. The darkness is sprinkled through a story about watching rockets launch, performing water ballet at Girl Scout camp, sneaking an illicit copy of All You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex and reading it cover to cover in the bathroom, falling from a tree house, dachshunds kissing poisonous frogs, and swim teachers teaching girls how to kiss a boy.
Kercheval gives us so many quirky, specific details that we feel as if we’re in a child’s mind, trying to make sense of the world when so much essential information is withheld from her. She share her epiphanies with her, as she discovers the source of her mother’s depression (a woman who was once a major in the Army and later worked at the U.S. Treasury is now stuck at home as a housewife) and the treatment that makes her depression worse:
“Now, of course, after Betty Ford and the experiences of a thousand other women, I can see it was the Valium that was killing her. Instead of helping, the Valium only made her more and more depressed. Her doctor gave it to her, gave her more and more, because that was what doctors were told to do for women who took to their beds but didn’t sleep, who were unhappy without knowing why. On top of everything else, the summer before, she’d had a mastectomy. This was in the days when women routinely went in to have a lump checked and woke up with half their chests missing.”
Even though my mother was born decades later than Kercheval’s, I can see my mother, and her whole generation, in this book. Kercheval’s mother’s struggles reflect those of so many others, trying to find purpose and value in a world where women are expected to give up their jobs and follow their husbands, a world in which the doctors are mostly men and women are mostly told to just do what they say.
Kercheval’s big-hearted empathy and lack of bitterness, her self-implicating honesty, and her knack for telling an amusing story, makes this a book with a broad audience. I’ll recommend to my friends and my mother and also to my eleven-year-old daughter.
The early parts are so funny and tender that we almost don’t notice the darkness, like an undertow, lurking beneath. Jesse almost drowns and her parents don’t even notice (and her main response is disappointment that her life didn’t flash in front of her—probably, she concludes, because she hadn’t lived enough of it yet). Her father takes refuge at work, and her mother is more distant than the moon: “If I started into some confession, some betrayal of emotion that struck her as altogether too personal, I knew it without her saying a word. Her smile would shut off as if she had suddenly left her body, the table, me. I imagined her floating near the ceiling, fingers in her spirit ears, humming The Stars and Stripes Forever to keep from hearing a word I said. Only when I stopped, my story dying away without a middle or an end, would she drift down and rejoin her still-seated body, smile, and ask me what I wanted for dessert.”
Then comes the darkest part: “For reasons I didn’t understand and no one seemed willing to explain to me, Mother was spending most of each day in bed.”
This is the story of children having to raise themselves, even while their parents are still alive. Carole, Jesse’s senior by two years, emerges as the hero, the mother-substitute. Like the best memoir, this one is written with a light hand, the humor and the empathy for all the flawed characters keeping the prose buoyant and fresh. The darkness is sprinkled through a story about watching rockets launch, performing water ballet at Girl Scout camp, sneaking an illicit copy of All You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex and reading it cover to cover in the bathroom, falling from a tree house, dachshunds kissing poisonous frogs, and swim teachers teaching girls how to kiss a boy.
Kercheval gives us so many quirky, specific details that we feel as if we’re in a child’s mind, trying to make sense of the world when so much essential information is withheld from her. She share her epiphanies with her, as she discovers the source of her mother’s depression (a woman who was once a major in the Army and later worked at the U.S. Treasury is now stuck at home as a housewife) and the treatment that makes her depression worse:
“Now, of course, after Betty Ford and the experiences of a thousand other women, I can see it was the Valium that was killing her. Instead of helping, the Valium only made her more and more depressed. Her doctor gave it to her, gave her more and more, because that was what doctors were told to do for women who took to their beds but didn’t sleep, who were unhappy without knowing why. On top of everything else, the summer before, she’d had a mastectomy. This was in the days when women routinely went in to have a lump checked and woke up with half their chests missing.”
Even though my mother was born decades later than Kercheval’s, I can see my mother, and her whole generation, in this book. Kercheval’s mother’s struggles reflect those of so many others, trying to find purpose and value in a world where women are expected to give up their jobs and follow their husbands, a world in which the doctors are mostly men and women are mostly told to just do what they say.
Kercheval’s big-hearted empathy and lack of bitterness, her self-implicating honesty, and her knack for telling an amusing story, makes this a book with a broad audience. I’ll recommend to my friends and my mother and also to my eleven-year-old daughter.
July 15, 2011
I really enjoyed this point of view and time period, but then...I'm a total memoir sucker. Add NASA and the 60s, and this was just perfect for me!
Kercheval aptly captured the optimism of Space Program 60s America as I imagine it was for regular kids struggling with race, class, menstruation, first kisses, etc.
Some highlights - the chapter about Girl Scout Camp was dead on for so many reasons - her take on race relations, teenage pecking order, the fact that the moon walk was in the background of seemingly more pressing everyday matters. Her feelings for her sister were heartbreaking. My favorite chapter by far was the one which described her visit to Cape Canaveral - the tension she built up for the Apollo 1 accident was palpable.
One criticism - some chapters seemed a bit too trite and to end a little too perfectly. I see that some of them were published separately in literary journals through the years, and that makes sense.
Kercheval aptly captured the optimism of Space Program 60s America as I imagine it was for regular kids struggling with race, class, menstruation, first kisses, etc.
Some highlights - the chapter about Girl Scout Camp was dead on for so many reasons - her take on race relations, teenage pecking order, the fact that the moon walk was in the background of seemingly more pressing everyday matters. Her feelings for her sister were heartbreaking. My favorite chapter by far was the one which described her visit to Cape Canaveral - the tension she built up for the Apollo 1 accident was palpable.
One criticism - some chapters seemed a bit too trite and to end a little too perfectly. I see that some of them were published separately in literary journals through the years, and that makes sense.
June 5, 2011
Although the title is Space and the author does talk about the history of the space program as it relates to her childhood and adolescence, there was not enough information for me. I was expecting more; maybe not as much as The Right Stuff but more than this. Her memory of the Apollo 1 tragedy is what I was expecting, but many other references seem tangential. She and her sister both seem like they would have liked being astronauts but she doesn't go into it very much until literally the last paragraph of the book. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the memoir and her stories of growing up in the 1960s. It impressed upon me the fact that as a society we are much more protective and aware of our children now.
May 13, 2019
I love this book. There are so many things in it that resonate with me. Our family moved to Florida's "Space Coast" in 1964 and I, too, have a sister near my age. From playing on huge sandhills to dancing behind the mosquito fogging trucks and feeling the windows rattle with rocket "lift-offs," Kercheval nails the details of my childhood as well as her own. Her humor and heart make this book well worth a read.
July 18, 2011
Coming of age in Cocoa Beach during the years of manned space flight, amid family tragedy, the author weaves internal quest into the nation's quest for meaning and exploration. I found the book very moving from the points of view of the author as a child, as an adolescent, and as an adult reflecting on her experience.
July 9, 2015
I LOVED this book and highly recommend it to anyone who grew up on the space coast during the 60's and 70's, particularly my Cocoa friends. This is a coming of age story of a girl who grew up in Cocoa during the Apollo program. I was immediately transported back to my youth as she named so many places and experiences that rang true for me.
July 18, 2016
This is absolutely incredible that it is an autobiography of sorts. The book conveys the life of Jesse very lightly and how a child would. I truly enjoyed almost every word of it. Some bits were brutal and heart wrenching, but others were light hearted and at times devious and naughty just as children's minds normally are.
January 23, 2016
Often in memoir it's the big explosions or it doesn't count. Space shows how the nicks and cuts of the heart add up over time and also how life goes on. The space program, puberty, and Florida humidity are characters in and of themselves.
June 23, 2016
This is a really good memoir about growing up as a girl. I read it fast and with a lot of interest. On the other hand, it was not till the last 50 pages or so that I realized I had read it before. Also, it is not about space, just set in a backdrop of the Apollo era.
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January 15, 2010memoir
Want to read
March 11, 2010Alex Award
December 1, 2011
I enjoyed this. It was a nice, quiet memoir about a girl growing up on the Space Coast.
Read
November 19, 2012Jessie's memoir of her life. She is me, b. 1956.
May 6, 2009
Interesting memoir and takes place in the Cocoa area around the late 60's
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews