Making Toast
A Family Story
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“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.”
When their thirty-eight-year-old daughter Amy died suddenly, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife moved in with their son-in-law to raise their three young grandchildren. This is their story.
Grandparents Raising Grandchildren: From learning the children’s breakfast orders to navigating school pickups and playdates, Rosenblatt documents the bittersweet reality of stepping back into parenthood.A Portrait of Grief: An unflinching yet restrained look at the anger, emptiness, and profound sorrow that follow an unimaginable loss, written with a journalist’s clarity and a father’s heart.The Power of Family: When his granddaughter asks how long they are staying, the author’s answer is simple: “Forever.” A testament to the resilience of family bonds in the face of tragedy.Finding Hope in the Everyday: Discover how the simple act of making toast becomes a daily ritual of love, a quiet anchor in a world turned upside down.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
