Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination
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The author of Baldwin’s Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual...
History Politics
Journey Into The Whirlwind
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Eugenia Ginzburg's critically acclaimed memoir of the harrowing eighteen years she spent in prisons...
Classified Woman
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In this startling new memoir, Sibel Edmonds—the most classified woman in U.S. history—takes us...
The Frontman
9.0
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Ron Bahar is an insecure, self-deprecating, seventeen-year-old Nebraskan striving to please his...
Detour from Normal
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This harrowing memoir tells the true story of a beloved family man and respected engineer who...
Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp
7.0
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In 1939, Helga Weiss was a young Jewish schoolgirl in Prague. As she endured the first waves of the...
Memoir History Nazi Germany Concentration Camp Jewish Survivor
My Life In The United States Navy
10.0
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I turned 17, the fall of my senior year and had enough credits to graduate early. I chose to join...
memoir military bookbuzz
Jay leaves college, determined to become a writer, and heads to Paris. There he meets a young model, Katerina, and falls in love. Twenty-five years later, Jay is a writer--famous and rich--but he's lost his way. Then he receives a message from a lost love. The message draws him back to memories of his old life and his old loves.
Years ago, James Frey dazzled me with A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard. I loved those books so much, and while I was aware of some of the controversy surrounding Pieces, I don't think I fully grasped it. Katerina is a strange book--a memoir type story hidden as a novel that loosely covers Frey's life, including the time he wrote a novel that was sort of a memoir. Following? Confused? Me too.
I thought Katerina was a book, fiction, but it's really Frey's retelling of his life, trying to cast himself as a sympathetic character (I think? Jay doesn't exactly come across as all that likeable.). It did intrigue me enough to read up more on the past controversies of his life and truly, the end result was that I didn't care for Katerina all that much, and I felt disillusioned about Pieces, a book I really enjoyed. Sigh.
Katerina uses the same stream of consciousness writing style from Pieces, and if you don't want your writing filled with profanity and sex, I wouldn't go near Katerina with a ten-foot pole. There's drinking--so much drinking here--that it physically pained me at times. It's an emotional read--Frey excels at that--and there are some twists. I won't lie, I found it interesting at times, and narcissistic and boring at others. Jay is hard to like in the past and present (the book splits it time between the two), but I do not think Frey cares, and it covers Frey's scandals lightly disguised as Jay's.
It's a beautiful love letter to Paris; the descriptions of the city are wonderful. There's no real characterization of Jay's beloved Katerina (the person), though, and many descriptions are just repetitive. The ending comes up quickly, as well.
Overall, while I found pieces of this novel engaging, I was disappointed overall. Honestly, I'll probably never be able to capture the magic I found in Frey's early works. 2.5 stars.
Eleanor (1463 KP) rated Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus in Books
Nov 17, 2019
Each chapter roughly focuses on an area on the number 12 bus route but from there we jump almost in each paragraph between historical facts, recollections, and observations. It fails to develop any flow and where we do get some lovely passages of insight into Sandi’s fascinating life and experiences we are drawn all too quickly out of the experience to find out what used to be sold in this particular part of London in the dim and distant past, or what terrible bus habit another passenger may be exhibiting.
This book just was too all over the place as a sit down read, it would make a great addition to any toilet library though (and I truly mean that in the nicest way) as all the little titbits of facts and anecdotes are individually interesting they just don’t seem to flow together. I could easily read a more standard memoir from the ever amazing and inspiring Sandi based on the passages in this book that focused on her. Equally, I could read a book on the neglected women through history written by her or a general history of London but changing focus every paragraph or so was not for me.
Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.
The Wild Oats Project
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A testament to how far feminism has taken us all...her search for sexual nirvana is hugely...