My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy
A vibrant, moving portrait ... Each piece stands alone and often has the rhythm of a joke, the kind of joke Hirsch excels at—funny, sad, ironic all at once ... Other sections read like verse without the line breaks, beautiful, rhythmic reminders that a poet is at the mic ... A hilarious, poignant memoir by a wonderful, generous writer. The first half is so vivid and original, so bursting with life and unforgettable people, that a downshift was almost inevitable ... The book sustains its humor, clarity and smarts, as well as the integrity of its form, though now the titled pieces feel less like metal for the smelter and more like houses in a Midwestern Levittown.
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Odd, occasionally funny and sometimes painful ... A sprawling narrative peopled by an eccentric crew of relatives and friends and quickened with an array of setbacks, successes, disappointments and cruelties told with wit and a few regrets ... The comedy flows throughout, as Mr. Hirsch describes people and relates events in a straightforward, deadpan style ... Despite the humor, an undercurrent of sadness runs through the book ... Mr. Hirsch relates the difficult scenes...in the same matter-of-fact tone he employs to describe the many details of his childhood. This stands in notable contrast to his poetry, which also focuses on quotidian events but is invested with salvos of emotion.
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Each chapter is devoid of sentiment yet concentrated with life ... The triumph of My Childhood in Pieces is that it is able to capture a specific Jewish American experience not only in content but also in form ... Commemorates a family’s survival with the same tough love used to survive it.
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