I am really pleased to be able to post my review today of Tilting, A Memoir by Nicole Harkin as part of the first birthday celebrations. My thanks to the author and Rachel of Rachel's Random Resources for the review copy and inviting me to be a part of the blog blitz. You can get your copy of the book here.
There is also a trailer to whet your appetite
We only learned about our father's
girlfriend after he became deathly ill and lay in a coma 120 miles from our
home.
Overhearing the nurse tell Linda--since I was
nine I had called my mom by her first name--about the girlfriend who came in almost
every day to visit him when we weren't there confirmed that the last moment of
normal had passed us by without our realizing it. Up to then our family had
unhappily coexisted with Dad flying jumbo jets to Asia while we lived in
Montana. We finally came together to see Dad through his illness, but he was
once again absent from a major family event--unable to join us from his
comatose state. This is the moment when our normal existence tilted.
Dad recovered, but the marriage ailed, as did
Linda, with cancer. Our family began to move down an entirely different path
with silver linings we wouldn't see for many years.
In this candid and compassionate memoir which
recently won a Gold Award in The Wishing Shelf Book Award, Nicole Harkin
describes with an Impressionist's fine eye the evolution of a family that is
quirky, independent, uniquely supportive, peculiarly loving and, most of all,
marvelously human.
My Thoughts:
I very rarely read memoirs much preferring the fictional lives of the characters. There was something about Tilting though that sucked me in and I am so glad that I read this raw and emotional read. I will be thinking about it for some days to come.
Nicole Harkin has written about herself and her family in a way that engages the reader. She writes with great warmth and wit given some of the circumstances portrayed. She manages to present the family dynamic and what life was like for them. The title is so apt families and their members are always Tilting. Changing direction slightly sometimes, at others being tipped completely on their axis. Bending but never completely breaking.
Everything changes when Nicole's Father is in a coma in hospital and it transpires he has a girlfriend and a secret life and when Linda her Mother has Cancer. The entire memoir is littered with vignettes from different periods in the family timeline.
Tilting is honest, raw and emotional and a portrayal of a family and was very real and inescapably readable. Highly thought provoking and interesting.
About the Author:
Nicole Harkin currently
resides in Washington, DC with her husband and two small children. She works as
a writer and family photographer. As a Fulbright Scholar during law school,
Nicole lived in Berlin, Germany where she studied German environmentalism. Her
work can be found in Thought Collection and you are
here: The Journal of Creative Geography. She is currently
working on mystery set in Berlin. Her photography can be seen at www.nicoleharkin.com.
Social Media Links –
No comments:
Post a Comment