Wednesday, December 20, 2006

True?

How much of the book do you think is true?
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8 comments:

Erin said...

I never considered that any of it might not be true. You think some of it wasn't?

2:07 PM, December 20, 2006
Ben said...

Well, maybe "not true" is too strong. But a lot of details, especially the hard-to-believe ones, are of the impossible-to-remember variety.

Some of the days she describes, where six crazy things happen or ten bones break, not to mention the constant miraculous timing, hint at a loose concept of accuracy.

2:18 PM, December 20, 2006
kc said...

Ben, are you done with the book?

2:34 PM, December 20, 2006
kc said...

I think the book was entirely accurate. But as with all memoirs, the writer needs to weave the truths together in way that is interesting to read. For example, I'm sure she did not remember the conversations in the book verbatim, but she captured the essence of them. She wrote them as dialogue, as approximations of what was said. There's no other way to accomplish that, and I didn't mind knowing that they were "re-creations."

She says at the end that her mom NEVER lied but that she came up with ways to make the truth more palatable. Like, when asked her weight, she tells him what she weighed in June. I think with regard to her memoir, Terry is her mother's daughter.

2:45 PM, December 20, 2006
Ben said...

No, I've not finished yet.

2:59 PM, December 20, 2006
kc said...

Well, in the end, you get a better sense of how the book came together, and it sheds some light on issues of remembering and accuracy.

3:32 PM, December 20, 2006
cl said...

Sometimes I thought that when she was to re-create dialogue (mom and brothers interacting at the hospital, for example, when Terry wasn't there) it sounded a little stilted. The author's exposition was more natural than the dialogue, though I believed it to be accurate.

3:56 PM, December 20, 2006
kc said...

Yeah, I'd agree with that, cl.

6:32 PM, December 20, 2006

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