Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder’s Reviews > Book of Lives A Memoir of Sorts > Status Update

“One of these days that smart mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble,” said my father after yet another of my mean and pointed quips. How right he was, except it hasn’t been just one of these days. It’s been a lot of them.

I said, “No thank you,” giving as my reason the higher educational standards to be found in the public school system then. But you, Dear Reader, will divine the truth: a school full of girls and nothing but girls was my idea of the Ninth Circle of Hell. I’d had too much experience of their menacing powers back in Grade Four. That experience was buried deep in my psyche; but, like a vampire, it was still alive.

Possibly you will never entirely trust anyone. You will be endlessly wondering about hidden motives and secret agendas. You will know that there are likely to be at least two stories: the one you’re being told, and the other one. You might become a detective. You might become a con artist yourself. Or, a blend of the two: you might become a novelist.

Another of my stuffed animals was a giraffe, covered with strange pink wartime oilcloth. Why was his name Squirrely? Search me. During a motorboat trip, Squirrely went overboard ... But the next spring, there was Squirrely, floating in the lake and not much the worse for his ordeal.
Narratives could change. Disasters could be reversed. Redemption was possible. The dead could live again. Miracles could happen.

Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives and the one who writes. Every question and answer session at a book event is an illusion. It's the one doing the living, not the one doing the writing who is present on such occasions. How could the writer be there, since no writing is being done at that moment? Like Jekyll and Hyde ...

[from the Introduction, actually page xix]

You were such a sensitive child!
- My Mother
But I'm quite flinty now.
- Me
Yes. You are.
- My Daughter
One of these days that smart mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble.
- My father, when I was a teenager

[from the epigraph, actually page ix]