Vertigo: A Memoir - Softcover

Desalvo, Louise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452273242 ISBN 13: 9780452273245

Publisher: Penguin, 1997

Synopsis

Born to immigrant parents during World War II and coming of age during the 1950s, DeSalvo finds herself rebelling against a script written by parental and societal expectations. In her revealing family memoir, DeSalvo sifts through painful memories to give voice to all that remained unspoken and unresolved in her life: a mother's psychotic depression, a father's rage and violent rigidity, a sister's early depression and eventual suicide, and emerging memories of childhood incest. At times humorous and often brutally candid, DeSalvo also delves through the more recent conflicts posed by marriage, motherhood, and the crisis that started her on the path of her life's work: becoming a writer in order to excavate the meaning of her life and community.

In Vertigo, Louise DeSalvo paints a striking picture of the easy freedom of the husband and fatherless world of working-class Hoboken, New Jersey, the neighborhood of her early childhood, where mothers and children had an unaccustomed say in the running of their lives while men were off defending their country, but were jolted back into submission when World War II ended. Hoboken was not a place where girls were encouraged to develop their minds, or their independent spirits, yet it is that tenement-dotted city with its pulse and energy, wonderful Italian pastry, and sidewalk roller-skating contests, and not suburban Ridgefield, where the family moves when Louise is seven, that claims Louise's heart.

Written with an honesty that is as rare as it is unsettling, Vertigo also speaks to broader truths about the impact of ethnicity, class, and gender in American life. Offering inspiration and a healthy dose of subversion, this personal story of a writer's life is also a study of the alchemy between lived experience and creativity, and the life-transforming possibilities of this process.

About this title

Review:

"Gripping in its parade of detail and profusion of stories. . . An extremely readable book." Kirkus Reviews

"DeSalvo's method feels philosophically right. Life is not a teleology; it is chaotic, promiscuous in its associations. . . she is a witty, graceful, sensuous,
a natural performer." -- Newsday

"DeSalvo meditates and relfects, weaving narrative from incident and insight....De Salvo investigates the literal and metaphorical gaps in her background in The 'unlikely narrative of how a working-class Italian girl became a critic and writer.'" -- The Chicago Tribune

"Written in the present tense, in fairly short sections that preserve the immediacy of her
memories, the book skips around in time, organized more by topics than chronology. Throughout, the narrative pushes forward impatiently...conveying to the reader the urgency of her (DeSalvo's) needs. . .Most of this is pretty serious stuff. Luckily DeSalvo has a healthy sense of humor and an earthy streak. The sections on food and clothes are both hilarious and touching." --The San Francisco Chronicle

"Her (De Salvo's) clarity of insight and expression makes this an impressive achievement." -- Publishers Weekly

"The writing here is terrific." "Los Angeles Times"
"DeSalvo has one of the most refreshing feminist voices around." "San Francisco Chronicle"
"One of the pleasures of Vertigo is its continual sense that DeSalvo's own history is as mysterious to her as it might be to us, that she, like her reader, is a stranger in a strange land, a perpetual traveler." "Newsday""

"The writing here is terrific." --Los Angeles Times

"DeSalvo has one of the most refreshing feminist voices around." --San Francisco Chronicle

"One of the pleasures of Vertigo is its continual sense that DeSalvo's own history is as mysterious to her as it might be to us, that she, like her reader, is a stranger in a strange land, a perpetual traveler." --Newsday

"The writing here is terrific." --Los Angeles Times

"DeSalvo has one of the most refreshing feminist voices around." --San Francisco Chronicle

"One of the pleasures of Vertigo is its continual sense that DeSalvo's own history is as mysterious to her as it might be to us, that she, like her reader, is a stranger in a strange land, a perpetual traveler." --Newsday

Synopsis:

This widely acclaimed memoir is a vivid account of a young Italian American girl's struggle to transcend the limits imposed on her life and documents the making of a working-class writer and scholar.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0452273242
• ISBN 13: 9780452273245
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288