Synopses & Reviews
A new memoir from the author of the popular Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art.
Review
"An honest woman, Judith Barrington told us how to write a memoir, and now
she shows us: the orphaning events of childhood can become generous muse."
-- Kim Stafford
Review
"Lifesaving reminds us that memoir is an art form, and can equal the novel
in shapeliness, intensity, and fascination. Barrington's easygoing
narrative and the good humor of the tone-often disarmingly funny-conceal a
dark, driving undercurrent of pain. The complex levels of imagery build to
a resolution as hard-won as it is inevitable. It's not easy to be honest
about one's youth, about the lies one's lived, about death, about sex, but
that's what this story is about, and it's told with a beautiful honesty. I
think a great many people will find it speaks to them about the hard places
and the hard choices, while they love it for its sunlit picture of a woman
young, wild, and wildly alive." -- Ursula K. Le Guin
Review
"Throughout her writing is superb; she evokes smalltown Spain under Franco
in lush detail with solid philosophical insight into the tragedy that
changed her life. Among the growing number of memoirs, this is a gem."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Synopsis
In 1963, the author's parents drowned when the cruise ship Lakonia caught fire and sank north of the Canary Isles. Barrington was nineteen. Lifesaving is a lyrical rendering of an event that foreshadowed the accident, the years of holding grief at bay -- much of them in Franco's Spain, and her eventual passage through mourning. Lifesaving is also a coming-of-age story in its illumination of the special ways that teenagers deal with loss. The story is told with gentle humor and consummate skill.