![]() ![]() She writes with intelligence and insight, not always easy to find in an essayist. Vivian Gornick was a fine tour guide of the books she included here, some of which I had read before, others not at all. These are books I can count on to be comforting whenever I read them again, never changing. A few books have remained as I first read them, most notably, To Kill A Mockingbird. The examples could go on and on, but the fact is that as readers we either grow into or away from the content between the covers. I adored Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel in my idealistic 20's, but couldn't get through it just a few years ago. Same words, different book, because I was a different reader. Her father was a drunk, always spending what little money he had in bars, and her mother was overworked and overwhelmed by their poverty. Reading it again as a middle aged adult who had raised a daughter of my own, I saw the truth. I read it as a 12 year old and hung on every word, envying Francie's adoration of her fun loving, happy-go-lucky father, thinking her mother was too strict and hateful. I have marveled at my own re-readings and how much life experiences and perceptions can color my opinion. In this book of 10 chapters, Gornick revisits books that have meant something to her in some way, sometimes reading a book 3 or 4 times at different stages in her life, and finding different meanings each time. I can't remember the time when I didn't have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me." Guided by Gornick's trademark verve and insight, Unfinished Business is a masterful appreciation of literature's power to illuminate our lives from a peerless writer and thinker who "still read to feel the power of Life with a capital L." Carr and Pat Barker, uncovers the psychological complexity of Elizabeth Bowen's prose, and soaks in Natalia Ginzburg, "a writer whose work has often made me love life more." After adopting two cats, whose erratic behavior she finds vexing, she discovers Doris Lessing's Particularly Cats. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, assesses womanhood in Colette's The Vagabond and The Shackle, and considers the veracity of memory in Marguerite Duras's The Lover. ![]() Gornick finds herself in contradictory characters within D. In nine essays that traverse literary criticism, memoir, and biography, one of our most celebrated critics writes about the importance of reading-and re-reading-as life progresses. Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader is Vivian Gornick's celebration of passionate reading, of returning again and again to the books that have shaped her at crucial points in her life. ![]()
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