The Glen Rock Book of the Dead
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In her author’s note to the book, Marion Winik writes that in Mexico on the Day of the Dead, “people build altars to their loved ones . . . they go to the cemetery and stay all night, praying, singing, drinking, wailing. They tell the sad stories and the noble ones; they eat cookies shaped like skeletons. They celebrate and mourn at once.”Striking that balance, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead presents snapshot portraits of The Jeweler, The Driving Instructor, The Bad Influence—and roughly fifty others who have touched Winik’s life in some way, from her son’s second-grade teacher to Keith Haring. Winik ties these portraits together with observations that strike chords of both loss and joy—forming not only an autobiography but a story of our time.Known for the honesty that made her debut memoir, First Comes Love, so riveting and powerful, Winik taps into the rich territory of her own life yet again to deliver a lyrical journey that ultimately raises the spirits. Publishers Weekly Taking a cue from the Mexican Day of the Dead, on which they build altars to deceased loved ones, "tell the sad stories and the noble ones... celebrate and mourn at once," author and NPR personality Winik (Rules for the Unruly) chronicles her life through glimpses of the late members of her adopted Pennsylvania home, Glen Rock, who have influenced her over the years. Most are friends of friends and the like; a few others are artists and authors. An eye doctor who passed away when she was a child, for example, had been a friend of the family, a former classmate of her father, and among the first deaths that touched Winik personally. She talks of neighbors who committed suicide, men who died of drug overdoses and women who battled cancer; she writes also of "The Art Star," Keith Haring, whose "adorable symbology-the crawling baby, the barking dog, the blowjobs and dolphins... made perfect sense to me the moment I saw it." ("I must have taken the same acid he did at a Grateful Dead concert when we were fifteen.") Winik treats her subjects with grace, sensitivity and a great deal of her own personality, bringing to brief life the known and unknown, giving each a fitting tribute and the town itself a winning pageant.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
