Review: With or Without You, by Domencia Ruta

With or Without You is a fractured family fairy tale. Like Grimm's witches, giants, or evil queens, Ruta's cast of characters fairly crackle off the page. I can imagine them weaving down highways in rusty cars, stealing my watch, perhaps burning down a house.

Ruta's parents were young when she was conceived, and throughout this memoir practically everyone who is an "adult" seems permanently stuck in adolescence. Kathi, Ruta's mom, is an addict, and Ruta's childhood was peppered with incidents ranging from mildly dysfunctional to downright abusive. Ruta's backwards gaze is unflinching, her memory is strong, and the characters are described with great detail, so it's a compelling read.

I received this memoir as an advance reading copy from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. If you're interested in reading With or Without You, the book will be released in March 2013.

Rating: four celery sticks

Review: All Gone, by Alex Witchel

All Gone is a poignant and heartfelt memoir about a parent's decline into dementia. The descriptions of Witchel's mother's increasing forgetfulness and depression are described with wonderful depth and emotion.


Alex Witchel is an accomplished writer (despite what her horrorshow of a father thought), but this book could have used stronger editing and a greater author commitment.


The refreshments mentioned in the subtitle are recipes at the end of each chapter, and are nostalgic but sometimes nasty -- frankfurter golash (shudder)? The book would have been better without them, as most are only tangentially mentioned in the memoir.

Witchel occasionally prattles on about her professional life rather than focusing on the painful reality of her mother's decline, and that feels like filler. In the end I wanted more, but it felt like Witchel was too exhausted to give it.

Rating: three and one half celery sticks