Strangers in the House: Life Stories

by Dorothy Gallagher

Dorothy Gallagher's critically acclaimed memoir,How I Came Into My Inheritance, told of her childhood in 1940s New York as the daughter of left-wing Russian Jewish immigrants. Time magazine called it... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400062578
• ISBN13: 9781400062577
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 142 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A must read for intellectual baby boomers

Starting with her young adulthood to the very adult need to care for an ailing spouse Dorothy Gallagher exhibits an emotional bravery that few writers ever achieve. The chapter about her family's history in the Ukraine and Russia and the few who survived is heart wrenching and should be read by everyone concerned about the current Russian invasion.

They're Not Strangers

Gallagher's wonderful book--even better than her "Inheritance" book--is full of characters who will be familiar to people who travel in New York's left-wing circles. The book is both laugh-out-loud funny and terribly moving.

Perfectly Seamless Book

This is a lucid, sexy and brave account of the author's marriages and love affairs. It tells these stories in a humorous and ironic voice, giving acid pen-portraits by the way of several celebrated New York artists and intellectuals. The title story tells of the author's last and lasting marriage -- a "marriage into sickness" -- to a writer with multiple sclerosis. This chapter should be required reading for all who have to deal not only with the presence at home of a cruelly progressive affliction, but also with the necessity of dealing with sometimes venal, sometimes violent household help. In the final chapter, the author deploys her gifts as a historian (she is the author of All the Right Enemies: the Life and Murder of Carlo Tresca). Here she narrates the story of a second cousin in Moscow. The chapter is called "Dumb Luck"; it poignantly justifies its epigraph from Wislawa Szymborska: "What.../ If I'd been born/ in the wrong tribe,/ with all roads closed before me?"