If only you people could follow directionso directions book

The author finds hope Don t be bogged down and overwhelmed by your problems survival is still possible If Only You People Could Follow Directions Counterpoint is one of those rare books which do not come along so often I strongly recommend it Memoir This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book Rated 3. Book if only you people could follow directions review 5 of 5What do you write about a book that is very well written the author conveys her message very well with compelling imagery and succinct language but which is so depressing that I never want to read anything else by this author ever again Jessica Hendry Nelson has had a pretty tough life This collection of memoir essays.

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This book was interesting I loved the catchy title and truth be known I was drawn to this book because of the title I thought this would be another well written memoir about a dysfunctional childhood and family And it was for the most part The writing was at times very good but I found it very disjointed By the end of the book it even seemed like the author had taken on a different style of writing It kept my interest but I wasn t blown over Had I known this was a collection of essays put together it would have made sense as I was reading it I still like the title but felt like it was missing her explanation about that She had one chapter with the same title but really no specific connection to it Memoir There s a blurb on the back of this book that talks about how Nelson has taken another familial memoir of addiction and made it vital and compelling I have to respectfully disagree To me it was just another familial memoir about addiction While I appreciated her writing there are some great poetic lines in here I wasn t that into the story Yes the characters have their quirks and they are portrayed wonderfully well but I ve read this type of story so so many times Nothing about it hit me square between the eyes which is what I want from a memoir Also I found it kind of scattered It jumps around A LOT sometimes without a section break to clue you in to what s happening One paragraph is in the present the next is a flashback to another time I really wanted to like this but it just didn t do it for me Memoir While this book is a collection of short stories they are so tightly related it feels like a loose novel These are sticky stories that need to be lived with a bit They are heavy but contain a beautiful wobbly sort of hope that draws you in I would suggest reading these stories interspersed between another book or books Reading them in one long sitting draws a false attention to their familiarity IMHO I think they are best enjoyed un collected as they might have been published in magazines found over time Memoir I wish I could say this was a riveting tale of a family woes and triumph over addiction with the help of love To me this seemed like one long disjointed journal entry The broken or fragmented recall of her past did not vibe with me So what she got high and still managed to graduate from college Her tales of getting high with her mom and friends her friends struggles the highs and lows didn t tell this story any differently to me Many people did thisit s called living life in poverty Just when my interest was piqued or I was moved to care she switched topics I wanted to ask her to follow directions Then I realized she wasn t trying to follow any and based on her tales didn t think anyone in her co dependent family could either Maybe my history as a substance abuse counselor made me want to counsel her rather than anything else The book wasn t terrible but I doubt if I ll ever read it again Memoir I ve heard that writers are supposed to open a vein to write but I wish Ms Nelson had chosen some other veins Her pain the drugs the word choice were all too much When one of her stories mentioned her MFA I chuckled to myself and wondered if her degree required that her stories be overwritten. Ebook if only you people could follow directions summary I battled on and enjoyed one story In New York about her trials as a school teacher and a few moments in some of the other stories in the last half of the book Overall it was a struggle It was country music without the humor It was a depressing sort of memoir told by a woman who has lived longer than she should in a time shorter than it seemed Memoir Really enjoyed this Compulsively read on a flight from Vermont straight through A group of essays the first one the prologue a declarative overview of the difficult young life of a girl with addiction running through her family like an earthquake fault What impressed me the most was the brutal unregenerate gaze here the inability to soften to look away to fake up a happy ending a sweet lesson No lesson here no excuses no apologies for the failures of self or of others What is courage in memoir writing The revelations of how it really was and one s own part in it It s the unwillingness to look away Her relationship with a difficult grandmother in The Dollhouse particularly complex. If only you people could follow directionster Here s a bit on memory These memories are however far from fixed They shift with the changing tides of the water on our brains the bubious salt of mere matter A cold Northeast wind perhaps Who can say for sure Each remembering is different such successive dredging unreliable than the last Our brains recreate as a function of self defense or self sabotage maybe a slightly larger hand a slightly longer hug a steeper walk a harder ache a toothier smile a smaller child. If only you people could follow directionsy what would happen just lines like She falls and the taste of gray is acrid like the dew on a familiar metal fence He looks through a window and watches the moon undress in the front yard Memoir If Only You People Could Follow Directions A Memoir by Jessica Hendry Nelson is no ordinary memoir It is a collection of linked autobiographical essays put together to form an amazing story the like of which I have never read before It is about addictions mental illness death incarcerations and financial instability It is the story of a dysfunctional family a story of hope as much as it is a story of redemption. Book if only you people could follow directions analysis Jessica Hendry Nelson is a smart and sharp writer When you are not taken in by the story you ll still find yourself browsing through the pages egged on by her fine writing and sheer brilliance It is unputdownable Whatever your verdict may be about this book it is both real and surreal In the midst of a seemingly insurmountable mountain of ruins If Only You People Could Follow Directions gives us a raw look at what Nelson has toughed out to become the person she is today But Nelson isn t looking for sympathy not that I can tell she s simply being frank with the reader. If only you people could follow directionsv directions book Those of us who didn t have such a raw up bringing understand intellectually that there are people like this in the world but experiencing it through the eyes of someone who lived it definitely makes me uncomfortable And of course that is perhaps the point Nelson is trying to get us to follow directions to see the bigger picture. If only you people could follow directions book pdf download The book opens with A Letter to Eric Jessica s brother who will play a major role in most of the book The letter recalls the two of them visiting their father in one of his many addiction recovery hospitals and then visiting him at another and then another Her entire memory of her father appears to be visiting him. Epub if only you people could follow directions download Eric takes up where her father leaves off and despite a very close relationship it is full of struggles She writes of some of their early times together I have a very early memory of choking my brother until he turned blue He couldn t have been than two years old Choking was one of my favorite methods of assault my scrawny brother writhing as I held him on the ground my knees pressed deep into his stomach I wasn t satisfied until he criedBut despite the fighting the two are incredibly closein the way that only two siblings who have to face a cruel world together can be Drugs and alcohol are a shared vice though Eric s will get him into trouble not unlike his father while Jessica appears to have hidden it well. Book if only you people could follow directions review Nelson also writes of her sexual encounters thirteen and a friend who was having sex with a boyfriend introduced her to someone who wanted to have sex with her Her memory of the concrete floor under her back and the enfolding arms afterward than the sex itself. Ebook if only you people could follow directions summary I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review Memoir It s hard to want to pick up memoirs these days Many of them are so self centered in the most literal of senses you feel like you re a vaguely unwanted guest at someone s wild and crazy party that somehow the horrible things that have happened to these writers make them special and you couldn t possibly be that special. Epub if only you people could follow directions pdf download Nelson s book on the other hand is a hard steady and extraordinarily beautiful look outward at her family at the psychology of addiction and by means of subtle reflection her own struggle being the daughter and sister of addicts The miracle of this book though is that I kept seeing illuminating flashes of myself that Nelson understands her craft so well she knows how to include the reader as a part of her story She creates this effect through humor understanding when to offer a funny aside or self deprecating comment to break the tension her fine tuned sense of when to shoot straight and when to allow lyricism to communicate meaning in her prose and most of all her honesty about her fears about her guilt and her desire to find peace for herself. If only you people could follow directions pdf free download Also the structural resonance of the book a memoir told in essays allows the reader a space to breathe contemplate the fragments and join them together with his or her own glue It s a brilliant way of shaping a memoir because it allows room for the reader to connect and it s only through that connection that you can be deeply moved by any type of literature. If only you people could follow directionsm directions I recommend If Only You People to anyone who wants to read a fine example of the form and find themselves in someone else s story Memoir Uneven There were times when the writing grew tiring and other times when it painted incredible scenes and feelings The jumping around from past to present was sometimes difficult to follow Memoir

If Only You People Could Follow Directions: A Memoir By Jessica Hendry Nelson

1619022338

9781619022331

English

256

Hardcover

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If Only You People Could Follow Directions is a spellbinding debut by Jessica Hendry Nelson In linked autobiographical essays Nelson has reimagined the memoir with her thoroughly original voice fearless writing and hypnotic storytelling At its center the book is the story of three people Nelson s mother Susan her brother Eric and Jessica herself These three characters are deeply bound to one another not just by the usual ties of blood and family but also by a mother s drive to keep her children safe in the midst of chaos The book begins with Nelson s childhood in the suburbs of Philadelphia and chronicles her father s addiction and death her brother s battle with drugs and mental illness her own efforts to find and maintain stability and her mother s exquisite power grief and self destruction in the face of such a complicated family dynamic Each chapter in the book contends with a different relationship friends lovers and strangers are all play but at its heart the book is about family the ties that bind and enrich and betray us and how one young woman sought to survive and rise above her surroundings If Only You People Could Follow Directions A MemoirRaised in the suburbs of Philadelphia Jessica Hendry Nelson earned a BA in English from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review The Carolina Quarterly Crab Orchard Review Painted Bride Quarterly Drunken Boat Alligator Juniper Fringe and PANK A chapter from this book The Whitest Winter Light won first place in Alligator Junipers national nonfiction contest and is a Notable essay in Best American Essays 2012 Here Fishy Fishy was a finalist in Crab Orchard Reviews 2011 John Guyon Literary Prize Competition and the title piece was nominated for a Pushcart Prize Nelson teaches writing at Johnson State College In Raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia Jessica Hendry Nelson earned a BA in English from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review The Carolina Quarterly Crab Orchard Review Painted Bride Quarterly Drunken Boat Alligator Juniper Fringe and PANK A chapter from this book The Whitest Winter Light won first place in Alligator Juniper s national nonfiction contest and is a Notable essay in Best American Essays 2012 Here Fishy Fishy was a finalist in Crab Orchard Review s 2011 John Guyon Literary Prize Competition and the title piece was nominated for a Pushcart Prize Nelson teaches writing at Johnson State College In 2013 she co founded the Renegade Writers Collective in Burlington Vermont Currently she is the Nonfiction and Managing editor of Green Mountains Review and lives in Winooski Vermont site_link.

. Ebook if only you people could follow directions summary I was compelled by Nelson s writing and like a traffic accident I didn t want to read on but I couldn t help but gawk anyway, If only you people could follow directionsm directions more often Looking for a good book If Only You People Could Follow Directions is a collection of memoir essays by Jessica Hendry Nelson that recalls a sad family life.Such beautiful writing