Making Toast - Hardcover

Rosenblatt, Roger

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006182593X ISBN 13: 9780061825934

Publisher: Ecco, 2010

Synopsis

“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.”

About this title

About the Author

Roger Rosenblatt  is the author of six off-Broadway plays and eighteen books, including Lapham Rising, Making Toast, Kayak Morning and The Boy Detective. He is the recipient of the 2015 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

From the Back Cover

"How long are you staying, Boppo?"

"Forever."

When his daughter, Amy—a gifted doctor, mother, and wife—collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies. Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny—Boppo and Mimi to the kids—quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, playdates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought. Though reeling from Amy's death they carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tender-hearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marvels at the strength of his son-in-law, a surgeon, and the tenacity and skill of his wife, a former kindergarten teacher, Roger attends each day to "the one household duty I have mastered"—preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking.

With the wit, heart, precision, and depth of understanding that has characterized his work, Roger Rosenblatt peels back the layers on this most personal of losses to create both a tribute to his late daughter and a testament to familial love. The day Amy died, Harris told Ginny and Roger, "It's impossible." Roger's story tells how a family makes the possible of the impossible.

Reviews

Rosenblatt wrote his "hauntingly lovely memoir" (Christian Science Monitor) as a collection of journal-style entries--images, conversations, scenes, and moments of quiet contemplation, ranging from a few sentences to several pages--that encompass the 14 months following Amy's death. Though Rosenblatt's subject matter is weighty, he writes of his grief with grace and sensitivity, while lacing his anger and disbelief with humor and warmth. However, the critics differed with respect to Rosenblatt's writing style: while the Christian Science Monitor found it oddly impassive, the Los Angeles Times characterized it as expressive and eloquent. The Chicago Sun-Times also thought that Rosenblatt's levity seemed somewhat out of place. Yet in the end, Making Toast is just as much a celebration of life as a reckoning with death.

Starred Review. Family tragedy is healed by domestic routine in this quiet, tender memoir. When his daughter Amy died suddenly at the age of 38 from an asymptomatic heart condition, journalist and novelist Rosen-blatt (Lapham Rising) and his wife moved into her house to help her husband care for their three young children. Not much happens except for the mundane, crucial duties of child care: reading stories, helping with schoolwork, chasing after an indefatigable toddler who is the busiest person I have ever known, making toast to order for finicky kids. Building on the small events of everyday life, Rosenblatt draws sharply etched portraits of his grandchildren; his stoic, gentle son-in-law; his wife, who feels slightly guilty that she is living her daughter's life; and Amy emerges as a smart, prickly, selfless figure whose significance the author never registered until her death. Rosenblatt avoids the sentimentality that might have weighed down the story; he writes with humor and an engagement with life that makes the occasional flashes of grief all the more telling. The result is a beautiful account of human loss, measured by the steady effort to fill in the void. (Feb. 16)
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When their daughter, Amy, died, Rosenblatt and his wife virtually moved in with their son-in-law and three grandchildren, all trying valiantly to cope with the death of a loving young woman and doctor felled by an asymptomatic heart condition. The Rosenblatts plunged themselves into the lives of Harris, six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, shopping, cooking, shuttling, and tending to broken hearts, including their own. Essayist, author, and playwright Rosenblatt, as grandfather Boppo, is tender and amusing as he recalls simple moments in the life of his daughter. His wife, Ginny, a former schoolteacher, essentially leads Amy’s life in her absence, congregating with the mothers at the children’s school activities and outings. Blindsided by Amy’s death, they are all fragile in their concerns for other family members; tardiness or a choking fit become occasions for worry. Friends who have lost children commiserate on the unbearable loss. Sensitive without being sentimental, Rosenblatt eases any potential discomfort on the reader’s part at this invitation to view one family’s efforts to cope with loss. --Vanessa Bush

Edition details

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 006182593X
• ISBN 13: 9780061825934
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176