Telling

by Marion Winik

Book Overview

Combining the insight of Anna Quindlen and the comic storytelling of Garrison Keillor with her own singularly outrageous humor, Marion Winik has captivated thousands of listeners on NPR's All Things Considered. Now, in Telling, she takes us on a journey both personal and universal, a tour of the minefield of chance and circumstance that make up a life. Along the way, she offers razor-sharp takes on everything from adolescence in suburban New Jersey...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679428593
• ISBN13: 9780679428596
• Release Date: February 1994
• Publisher: Villard Books
• Length: 213 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Marion Winik rocks!

Marion Winik is one of the best authors I personally have ever read. I've read (consumed might be a better word..lol) all of her books now and each one only furthers my belief in her writing. She even took the time to personally answer a letter I had written her, which only made me like her more. She's a great author and I will continue to read her works over and over again..

Baby-boomer memoirs without shame, remorse, or guilt

This book could have been written by Irma Bombeck . . . except that Irma Bomback would never have written about having an abortion, shooting heroin, or oral sex in the front seat of a car. Essentially, Winik writes about what happens when the generation who never trusted anyone over thirty now finds itself trapped at forty-something. Her reflections and insights are remarkable for their transparancy. Winik neither takes us on a nostalgic romp through "Gee, wasn't it great back then!", nor does she moralize from hindsight with "Here's what I did; here's what I learned; maybe you can benefit from my experience." Instead she just describes what is: what it's like to be forty-something and come to grips with one's history. I laughed, I cried, and I couldn't put the book down.

I must have writen this book one night while sleeping.

I picked up "telling" only yesterday from Barnes n nobles bargin stacks. (I was only searching non-fiction in my quest to learn more about the history of why). Even though I am already operating on sleep deprivation from my one year old and working all night and day lifestyle I could not put "telling" down (a RARE RARE, so RARE i can't even remember when I plowed through a book with such joy and amazement). I'm endlessly searching for those voices of comradioure (sp?), and have sifted through zillions of books looking for it, for that voice that speaks as if it were my own. Marion winik is this voice, but she's not, she appears to be 'just like me', but it's really just the seductiveness of her writing style, the ease at which she tells it, the way she's managed to take all of the hopeless fiascos we make of our lives and laugh them into o.k. now-ness. There is tradgedy, which she doesn't hide from, and small bits of philosophizing, but most of all its just a back and forth journey through the times of her life (which is so similar to our lives-from the fat and awkward childhood, to the artsy drug-rebelling adolescent, to the station-wagon driving mom in a condominium with a microwave). The real stuff is here, the events of life, unfolding through the ages, just like us. Even though my father is still alive, I'm not jewish and i've never been to new orleans, I'm still just like Marion Winik.

I must have writen this book one night while sleeping.

I picked up "telling" only yesterday from Barnes n nobles bargin stacks. (I was only searching non-fiction in my quest to learn more about the history of why). Even though I am already operating on sleep deprivation from my one year old and working all night and day lifestyle I could not put "telling" down (a RARE RARE, so RARE i can't even remember when I plowed through a book with such joy and amazement). I'm endlessly searching for those voices of comradioure (sp?), and have sifted through zillions of books looking for it, for that voice that speaks as if it were my own. Marion winik is this voice, but she's not, she appears to be 'just like me', but it's really just the seductiveness of her writing style, the ease at which she tells it, the way she's managed to take all of the hopeless fiascos we make of our lives and laugh them into o.k. now-ness. There is tradgedy, which she doesn't hide from, and small bits of philosophizing, but most of all its just a back and forth journey through the times of her life (which is so similar to our lives-from the fat and awkward childhood, to the artsy drug-rebelling adolescent, to the station-wagon driving mom in a condominium with a microwave). The real stuff is here, the events of life, unfolding through the ages, just like us. Even though my father is still alive, I'm not jewish and i've never been to new orleans, I'm still just like Marion Winik.