Jesse Lee KerchevalCritiques

In this book, Jesse provides clear steps and ideas to build structure and characters into a story. The book is well-written with clear goals and organization. She goes through different stages of writing discussing topics such as point of view, opening statements, building characters. She also compares the complexities and requirements of a book, short story and novella among others.

I found it easy to read and informative. She touches on ideas other books haven't covered without going into great details.

A woman discovers that she adopted and goes in search of her biological parents. The plot is full of too many unbelievable coincidences although it's entertaining.

http://tinyurl.com/mrwdbpa

In this completely enjoyable, absolutely beyond-question over-the-top piece of fiction, our protagonist loses both her husband and child in the first few pages (see, I'm not giving anything away there). It wasn't the best choice to start reading this month but it turned into something so crazy that I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Our author is a creative writing teacher at UWisconsin and she's had a surprising batch of stuff published (including a memoir about growing up around Cape Canaveral in the 60s that I may just pick up). I'm certain she's giving her students sound advice about writing because she knows her craft. She takes an actual personal story - she herself grew up in France and Florida - and makes it the background to this... ride. I can't describe it any other way.

How our protagonist acts throughout this book can easily be marked down to being distraught over the loss of her husband and daughter. It can also be marked down to an author saying to herself "well, I have this opportunity to write plot points willy-nilly simply because my protagonist is distraught." I don't think good novels work that way. Of course, bad novels work this way too - like "The Marriage Plot," for instance - and this particular novel isn't really bad. Just bizarro. With aspects of real-life thrown in for good measure.

Look, when you get to Russia, you'll understand what I mean.

42. Space : A Memoir by Jesse Lee Kercheval (1998, 278 pages, read July 18 - 25)

Kercheval writes about growing up in central Florida in the 1960's, in the shadow of NASA's race to the moon. It's doesn't help that her parents have their own problems and her mother disappears more and more while Kercheval and her older sister make their way through grade school and puberty and all that. As a memoir, it's sad and wonderful. Here is an excerpt from after her first and late discovery of what sex is:

It was more than that. It was as if the whole world had only been pretending certain things were important—science, art, politics, religion—when actually everyone was only interested in one thing, something not on that list. Sex. All the books I'd been reading without really understanding (War and Peace, The Sun Also Rises, the James Bond novels I'd snuck from my dad) were really all about sex. Everyone was having sex. Everyone except me.

2012
http://www.librarything.com/topic/138560#3562350½

Sometimes interesting, sometimes charming, sometimes dreary and sometimes very confusing book. I liked the beginning, really enjoyed the middle but found myself skipping passages near the end, toward the inevitable conclusion.

Helpful source for aspiring writers. Has many great tips and exercises that get the writer's mind working. i used this in a creative writing class and it flowed well with our progression throughout the semester. It really helps you build a full, well-rounded story.

I'm so excited to meet this author at the Nebraska Summer Writers' Conference in June. This collection of stories is really strong--especially the ones in the latter part of the book. This is such a great example of taking a group of stories with the same strong, well-drawn characters and weaving them together in chronological order to make a novel that sneaks up on the reader...mjr

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With remarkable detail, Kercheval (The Museum of Happiness, LJ 10/15/93) writes of growing up in Florida near Cape Kennedy. The rumble of rockets punctuates her encounters with boys, alcohol and other drugs, prejudice, a mother on valium, friendships, and other facets of life. In school she sees a film called The Wonderful Thing That Is Going To Happen to You Once a Month, and at the Cape she sees "Gus Grissom's sad dog-brown eyes" shortly before Grissom is killed. Her family slowly disintegrates, much like the space program, but just as man reaches the moon, she and her sister survive. The space program appears only as a thematic device?this is a lively coming-of-age tale, the creation of a personal space. Eventually Kercheval discovers that her childhood penchant for lying could turn a profit?she became a successful writer and professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her memoir will be of interest to public and academic libraries.?Nancy P. Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, N.C.
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