Landslide: True Stories

by Minna Zallman Proctor

“ Landslide is that rare book that somehow succeeds in being both knowing and open–hearted, both formally sly and emotionally direct. Its timeless subjects—grief, storytelling, the giving up of childish things—are rendered in ways that are as movingly honest as they are probing and unfamiliar. A swift, compelling read.” —Adam Haslett, author of Imagine Me Gone

Minna Zallman Proctor's Landslide is a captivating collection of interconnected personal essays. These “true stories” explore the author’s complicated relationship with her mother—who was diagnosed with cancer at age fifty–seven and died fifteen years later—and the ways in which their connection was long the “prime mover” of Proctor’s life, the subtle force coursing beneath her adulthood. As such, these vibrant essays also narrate the trials and triumphs of Proctor’s own life—shifting between America and Italy (and loving “being a foreigner, the constant sense of unfamiliarity that supplanted all of my expectations and disappointments”), her bumpy first marriage, the profound pleasure she takes in motherhood, and the confounding experience of trying to arrange a Jewish burial for her “Jewish, not quite Jewish” mother.

Proctor has an integrity and humor that is never extinguished despite life’s mounting difficulties. She also slyly questions her own narrative throughout. “Not having told this story before means I never fixed many details in my memory,” she writes. “[I] have to rely on flashes, the transparent stills that hang in my mind, made of smell, the way the light casts, the wind on skin.” The essays in this book are a sharply intelligent exploration of what happens when death and divorce unmoor you from certainties, and about the unreliable stories we tell ourselves, and others, in order to live.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir

149 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2017

About the author

Minna Zallman Proctor is a writer, translator, educator and editor of The Literary Review. New books include the memoir, Landslide: True Stories, a translation of Fleur Jaeggy's These Possible Lives, a translation of Natalia Ginzburg's Happiness, As Such and an autobiography collaboration with soprano Bethany Beardslee, I Sang the Unsingable: My Life in Twentieth Century Music. She teaches creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Nearly 4.5) This gorgeous set of autobiographical essays circles through some of the overarching themes of Proctor’s life: losing her mother, a composer – but only after three bouts with cancer over 15 years; the importance Italy had for both of them, including years spent in Tuscany and her work as a translator; a love for the work of Muriel Spark; her family’s loose connection to Judaism; and the relentless and arbitrary nature of time. She ponders the stories she heard from her mother, and the ones she now tells her children. “We all have totemic stories. The way we choose them—and then choose to tell them—is more important ultimately than the actual events.” A fine model for how to write non-linear memoir that gets to the essence of what matters in life.

Another favorite line:

“I was never good at making stuff up; I’m much more interested in parsing the density, inanity, confusion, and occasional brilliance of life around me.”

[Hailey Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree that some of the essays were very hard to get into. It wasn't until the chapter, "A Mystic at Heart," (about halfway through the book) that I really started enjoying the essays. Personally, I liked Proctor's stories about her mother & children more than her essays about her journey as a writer. I think this is why I appreciated the second half of the book more than the first and also why I gave the book 3 stars. Her stories about her family, her childhood, and finding her purpose as a grieving mother were beautifully written.

[Jenica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed some of these essays so much, but some of them, I just did not really understand why they were included or I felt like they dragged and getting through the ten pages would be excruciating for me. Now, there's a 99% chance that's not Ms. Proctor's fault, as non-fiction is not always my favorite. My favorite part, it should be noted, was Proctor's emphasis on how we construct our stories. I felt like she made me think about things in a way that I haven't often been challenged to do, so I really enjoyed that aspect of her narrative.

A full review will posted on my blog around Landslide's release date, so feel free to check back for fuller thoughts. Also, a disclaimer of sorts, I got this ARC in a box from a Twitter friend, not a publisher, but regardless, my thoughts have not been changed somehow because of the way I got this ARC.

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written autobiographical essays, about: her relationship with her mother, men, and her children, her writing career, and the time she spent in Italy.

—————

“It’s tricky to talk about shame. In the sphere of psychology, shame is tightly associated with narcissistic disorders. Shame in the hands of narcissists gets wildly perverted and expresses as an inability to understand anyone else’s pain. If you’re not on that spectrum, therapists tend to think that you really mean guilt and rush to reassure you. In religion, shame is fate and impossible to recover from. Like being expelled from the garden, or caught looking backward at Sodom. But shame is the betrayal of the self, and the most painful disappointment I’ve ever endured.”

[Jen Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not your typical memoir -- and that's a good thing! Proctor weaves memories and truths, the way a poet does. There is so much of art, of the philosophy of mothering and being mothered, small moments and big moments, the philosophy of lying, and what all of this does to a life and to all of the people in it. This is a comforting book, but also a foreign book -- one where Italian boyfriends leave cats on doorsteps, and pumpkins magically grow in dry Texas backyards. In other words, there is no way you can expect what's coming in this book, and that energy is the most lovely thing of all.

[Jerrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

I get all the good reading done at night, when time does not halt but makes sense. It seems both more endless and more manageable after midnight.

This book crawls back and forth across time and memory, being pulled by (and pulling at) the threads that fray.

It is a memoir told in a blended series of essays. Each contains shards of history that develop, disperse, and accrete meaning as the narrative roams.

Ms. Proctor offers a sly candor with plenty of wit and wistfulness. As an astrologer once told her she would, she has found way to make peace with life that she cannot change.

[Trevor Durham · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a bit to warm to Proctor's pure realism, but the layered stories eventually came together in my mind. Landslide has intense emotion disguised behind utter simplicity, but after setting it down, it leaves a certain impression on the mind. What kind of impression, I'm not sure, but it isn't altogether unpleasant.

[Marla Sigler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was blessed to win this book in a Goodreads Giveaway! I loved Minna Proctor's writing style - like flowing water.
This book is all at once beautiful, sad and witty. I highly recommend picking this one off the shelf to read. Looking forward to what she writes next.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

transplanting into the narrator's shoes
& their life experience

[Diane Mehta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful writing. I read the entire thing in one sitting and then went back and marveled at the part in Italian. My sister also read it and was rapt. There's an unusual attention to detail and associative thinking that really gets the essay as a form right, and takes it somewhere new.