I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory

Over the weekend, along with reading other books, I began plodding through the book I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory. I did not just ornament my sentence with the good verb choice of 'plod'; I mean that this book stultified me enormously. The beginning started off brilliantly. It was festooned with great action verbs, which guided the reader in. Then came the story after that, where the narrator beheld an experience that posed many questions. In this experience, an old woman had a young husband who bombarded her with kisses that he planted on her cheek or that he blew at her. The narrator identified this as true love and challenged the love that hovered around the relationship between her and her boyfriend. This stimulated much suspense, which drew me into the story. But after that, the narrator launched into an enormous essay in which she defined a memoir through various difficult analogies and metaphors. She restated the same thing many times, and I was stultified, even fatigued, after reading that. Then, the narrator told a story about how she was retrieving birth control pills in the 1960s, but she was mortified and ashamed because a lot people condescended to people who utilized birth control pills. Suddenly, the narrator transitioned into talking about the poetry and pieces that she loved to read, and she reflected on that for pages and pages.

I personally think the book was boring. The beginning was good, but that happiness was quashed as I trudged through her essay that defined memoirs and the boring reflection on what books she liked to read. To me, this book seemed like the author bundled together unrelated stories and forced them bear some similarities. It didn't make sense and it seemed contrived. In addition, I personally love to read stories, not essays. The essay/reflection portion of this book immensely eclipsed the storyline. Because of this, I abhorred this story. To me, this wasn't a memoir; it was a series of unrelated stories intertwined together in a contrived manner where there was a ton of essay writing a little storyline. I'd first of all not recommend this book. I'd only suggest it to people who want to hone their toleration skills; if you want to train yourself to read any material, no matter how boring, you should embark on a journey through this book. Also, people who love reading essays a lot should read this. They can probably tolerate it, now I cannot assure them that they will like the book or if their emotions about this book will even nudge a positive note.