Alice Hoffman had an advice-giving granny. Elizabeth McCracken had a crazy older cousin. Edward Hoagland had a sister who died at 3. Whitney Otto had a cat who lived a good long time.
As novelist Jane Smiley says, "The first novel I ever knew was our family." Her family supplied a large cast of characters and a wealth of detail. Everyone's family supplies the same, but not everyone can describe their family as well as Smiley does.She shares a few of the more important details ("my grandfather wore his bowling shirt to my aunt's wedding because nothing else was ironed") in the afterword to a new book. It is "Family: American Writers Remember Their Own" (Pantheon, $23, 255 pages).
"Family" is a collection of 16 short essays by 16 skilled writers. They are at their best when writing about the people (and pets) closest to their hearts. So what you have here are 16 of the country's best writers doing their best writing.
Bob Shacochis will make you melancholy, reflecting on the children he and his wife can't conceive. Jose Raul Bernardo will make you smile as he describes his Cuban grandpa at work in a steamy kitchen - clad only in his underwear.
This is how Whitney Otto describes her wedding:
John and I get married for real, in San Francisco, in front of family and one friend. We plan the wedding four days in advance, a kitsch sort of affair, a few steps below an Elvis wedding. One friend calls it the "Twin Peaks" wedding. It is held in a "chapel" in an apartment building that is studded with Christmas lights, with wood paneling covering the floors, walls and ceiling. There are other lovely decorative touches, including the cash register behind a window, near the entrance, with a sign overhead that reads `We do weddings' and income tax preparation. I hear the guests making sniffling noises during the ceremony and I think, even a cheesy wedding gets to people. This makes me want to cry. It is only after we say I do that I realize everyone was trying not to laugh.
Do you think this is good writing? I do. Do you like everyday details of ordinary lives? I do, when they are described this well.
I ordered four copies of this book to give as gifts. I have more family members than that, actually. They are going to have to share.