Self- Help Review
Beginning as a Master’s thesis, Self-Help is a rather impressive book that doesn’t seem like writing of a young mind. Lorrie Moore’s stories are very sharp, emotional, and widely admired. The tone she sets throughout the book shows a sense of humor and irony to the title. Consisting of nine different stories, Lorrie portrays multiple different interactions between lovers and family. All of which examine how each relationship could have been improved, while walking us through the characters pleasure and pain. While somewhat confusing, her wit and format can be quite complex yet intriguing. With her second person voice she writes with very vivid detail and gives a well developed story.
With titles such as “How to Be an Other Woman,” “How,” and “Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love” you can see the parody of self-improvement books. While these stories are all about the progression and outcome of intimate relationships, they all depict the different ways that the road of love can be followed. In “How to Be an Other Woman” the young woman is having an affair with a married man and struggling with the feelings she has of being the mistress. But in “Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love” the script is flipped, the main characters boyfriend is running around with his boyfriend while she works.
Moore not only uses her wit and intelligence to show how heartbreak and love loss could be avoided, but also demonstrates these within a family situation. . She moved smoothly from her tales of romance to those of motherly love. In the story “How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)” Lorrie tells the story backwards chronologically beginning with her mother’s death and moving on to her childho...
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...tly cut hair. He will laugh at your jokes. ” (55) At first the reading was a little confusing and hard to follow, but I believe it helped with the detail. Not until I could understand Lorrie’s unpredictable humor, did I understand the mindset of the characters. Many of the times I could almost picture the surroundings and the characters as they spoke.
While critical and sympathetic at the same time, “Self-Help” is a rather well rounded book. Although this was Lorrie’s first book ever published, you can tell that she is especially talented and smart. I would not give it 5 stars but probably a three. Depending on the reader I believe that it could be a number one pick. Filled with playful yet awkward humor and more mature puns, this book was one that was easy to get caught up in. Being a short and rather quick read, I would definitely say it’s worth checking out.
Ten year old Esther Burr creates a cheerful, reminiscent journal entry describing her day out with her father by using sophisticated word choice and an informal sentence structure. Burr’s purpose is to reveal her adoration for her father with flattering words and to also describe her day with such detail that she won’t forget it. She develops a complimentary tone in order to not only have a good memory of her father later in life, but also to appeal to her mother, who regularly reads her diary.
hooks, bell. "Seduction and Betrayal." Writing as Re-Vision: A Student's Anthology. Ed. Beth Alvarado and Barbara Cully. Needham Heights: Simon & Schuster Custom Publishing, 1998. 108-111.
No matter what actions or words a mother chooses, to a child his or her mother is on the highest pedestal. A mother is very important to a child because of the nourishing and love the child receives from his or her mother but not every child experiences the mother’s love or even having a mother. Bragg’s mother was something out of the ordinary because of all that she did for her children growing up, but no one is perfect in this world. Bragg’s mother’s flaw was always taking back her drunken husband and thinking that he could have changed since the last time he...
In individual searches to find themselves, Frank and April Wheeler take on the roles of the people they want to be, but their acting grows out of control when they lose sense of who they are behind the curtains. Their separate quests for identity converge in their wish for a thriving marriage. Initially, they both play roles in their marriage to please the other, so that when their true identities emerge, their marriage crumbles, lacking communication and sentimentality. Modelled after golden people or manly figures, the roles Frank and April take on create friction with who they actually are. Ultimately, to “do something absolutely honest” and “true,” it must be “a thing … done alone” (Yates 327). One need only look inside his or her self to discover his or her genuine identity.
The misfortunes Jane was given early in life didn’t alter her passionate thinking. As a child she ...
Before Mrs. Ames and the mother realize the restrictions of their old lives, their worlds have been full of disillusionment and ignorance. Mrs. Ames, for example, is oppressed by her husband’s silence and the search for love and tenderness from anyone, because she lives each day alone, ignored by her scornful husband. And, as a result of being left companionless, she does not mature, rather she longs for tenderness. In other words, Boyle explains her dysfunctional relationship with her husband, “The mystery and silence of her husband’s mind lay like a chiding finger of her lips. Her eyes were gray for the light had been extinguished in them” (57). That is, Mrs. Ames’ spirit remains oppressed by her husband who treats her as a child, and, in doing so, isolates her from his world.
...cts of the mother and the descriptions, which are presented to us from her, are very conclusive and need to be further examined to draw out any further conclusions on how she ?really? felt. The mother-daughter relationship between the narrator and her daughter bring up many questions as to their exact connection. At times it seems strong, as when the narrator is relating her childhood and recounting the good times. Other times it is very strained. All in all the connection between the two seems to be a very real and lifelike account of an actual mother-daughter relationship.
Each couple goes through a different scenario that affects marriage during their retreat and individual life journey. Through the scenarios, the audience can tell that money, lack of trust, closed feelings, and cheating breaks marriages apart; Tyler Perry’s writing about these problems creates a message for his audience. Tyler Perry’s combination of comedy and melodrama displays an unexpected climax leading to a soothing or a sad ending for the characters (Hale). This leaves the audience gasping to know what happens next; it introduces new drama for the characters. In addition, The plot structure focuses on “emotional affairs, domestic abuse, near-nervous breakdowns, cancer, and death” (Robeldo). In summary, Tyler Perry’s writing displays the connection between him and the audience, sharing a common lesson learned from watching the
Through the implementation of truncated sentences, Judy’s yearning and longing for Christopher’s affection is exemplified. This enables the responder to acknowledge the highly emotional state in which she is in. The setting of Christopher and his mother being alone in the bathroom also aids in the emotional, intimate and highly sensitive nature of their conversation. Despite how affected Christopher may be in realising his mother is alive, he is unable to recognise the plea in his mothers voice and fails to reciprocate the smallest morsel of physical affection towards her due to his desperation to keep things orderly and un-changing, therefore exposing the complicated nature of communication between the two.
Derricotte’s conclusive paragraph begins with, “My mother helps me. She sends me signs: her African violet bloomed for the first time on my windowsill three years after her death, on the first day of her death month…I love my mother now in ways I could not have loved her when she was alive, fierce, terrifying, unpredictable, mad, shame-inducing, self-involved, relentless, and determined by any means necessary” (53). The timing of her love for her mother became insignificant. It wasn’t about when she finally reached the point of loving her mother but the mere fact that she loved her. The utilization of descriptive writing and the emotional implementation in “Beginning Dialogues” are a couple of ways Derricotte enraptures her readers in this short story. Regardless of a painful past or a traumatic childhood she allows herself to see that love truly conquers
In Margaret Atwood’s short story, “Happy Endings,” the central theme of fiction provides several different kinds of marriages and relationships that ultimately result in the same ending. The “Happy Endings” shows that it’s difficult to have complete control over day-to-day events. No matter how hard society tries to achieve the perfect life, it does not always go as planned. It doesn’t matter if the characters are bored and depressed, confused and guilty, or virtuous and lucky; the gradual path of version A is not always in reach.
Regretfully, though readers can see how Mama has had a difficult time in being a single mother and raising two daughters, Dee, the oldest daughter, refuses to acknowledge this. For she instead hold the misconception that heritage is simply material or rather artificial and does not lie in ones heart. However, from Mama’s narrations, readers are aware that this cultural tradition does lie within ones heart, especially those of Mama’s and Maggie’s, and that it is the pure foundation over any external definition.
In “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Story of an Hour”, the woman in each story imprisons in the domestic sphere. In “Hills Like White Elephants”, the woman in this story conflicts between keeping the baby or getting abortion although the relationship with her boyfriend would not improve as he said. In “The Story of an Hour”, even though Louise Mallard, an intelligent, independent woman understands that she should grieve for Brently, her husband and worry for her future, she cannot help herself from rejoice at her newfound freedom. The author of this story, Kate Chopin suggests that even with a happy marriage, the loss of freedom and the restraint are the results that cannot be avoid.
Presenting the story from a third person perception and having the narration by the mother or “Mama” gives the story great relevance to real life situations that ha...
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)