Making Toast

A Family Story

De: Roger Rosenblatt

Narrado por: Roger Rosenblatt

“A painfully beautiful memoir…. Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive.” (E. L. Doctorow)

A revered, many times honored (George Polk, Peabody, and Emmy Award winner, to name but a few) journalist, novelist, and playwright, Roger Rosenblatt shares the unforgettable story of the tragedy that changed his life and his family. A book that grew out of his popular December 2008 essay in The New Yorker, Making Toast is a moving account of unexpected loss and recovery in the powerful tradition of About Alice and The Year of Magical Thinking. Writer Ann Beattie offers high praise to the acclaimed author of Lapham Rising and Beet for a memoir that is, “written so forthrightly, but so delicately, that you feel you’re a part of this family.”

©2019 Roger Rosenblatt (P)2019 HarperAudio

So Poignant

The author captures what it feels like to go on after loosing a loved one. Somehow he made it both unique and ordinary.

Disappointing

While I feel terrible that Mr. & Mrs. Rosenblatt suffered the terrible tragedy of losing their daughter, this book was extremely disappointing.

It was difficult to feel any sense of sympathy for any of the characters that were a party to this tragedy as the author’s focus seemed to be mostly on name-dropping and his travels back and forth to Quoge.

Some very cringe-worthy moments in the author’s narration as I felt his focus was more on how great he and his wife were as they helped their widowed son-in-law take care of the kids. Very disingenuous attempts to portray them as being from an almost middle class socio-economic status (couldn’t afford his daughter the wedding he felt she wanted) but could afford a full-time Nanny for the children, etc. His description of his wife’s beauty was also an odd inclusion in this story. Many uncomfortable moments in this book for me as the reader (listener).

This didn’t seem to be a book to be shared with the public but should have remained a private diary type of dissertation. Everyone was portrayed as too perfect.

This was not what I was expecting and feel it could have been so much more to help others encountering a similar situation. Their son-in-law was scarcely developed in this book.

Again, I feel terrible for them as a family, but this book did nothing to develop any sense of sympathy for this situation.