Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home

by Amy Dickinson

Hardcover, 2017

Status

Available

Publication

Hachette Books (2017), 240 pages

Description

Biography & Autobiography. Nonfiction. HTML: In Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things�??her follow-up memoir to the New York Times bestselling The Mighty Queens of Freeville�??America's most popular advice columnist, "Ask Amy," shares her journey of family, second chances, and finding love. By peeling back the curtain of her syndicated advice column, Amy Dickinson reveals much of the inspiration and motivation that has fueled her calling. Through a series of linked essays, this moving narrative picks up where her earlier memoir left off. Exploring central themes of romance, death, parenting, self-care, and spiritual awakening, this touching and heartfelt homage speaks to all who have faced challenges in the wake of life's twists and turns. From finding love in middle-age to her storied experience with stepparenting to overcoming disordered eating to her final moments spent with her late mother, Dickinson's trademark humorous tone delivers punch and wit that will empower, entertain, and heal… (more)

Rating

½ (19 ratings; 3.6)

User reviews

LibraryThing member CarrieWuj
I'm a daily fan of Amy Dickinson's advice column -- she's the Dear Abby/Ann Landers of our generation with a no-nonsense approach that often asks the advice seeker to take a look at him/herself in addition to the problem. She also offers book suggestions for perspective which I love. This memoir
Show More
provides good insight into the life experiences that have made her so wise. Raised by her mother after her charming, but noncommittal father did a runner, she shares childhood experiences that have become more relevant after her return to the town she grew up in (Freeville, NY) in recent years. There she re-establishes ties with her mother, sister, aunts and cousins and falls in love with and marries Bruno, whom she knew slightly in high school. That part is a little schmoopy and self-indulgent but overall it is a strong story of going back to roots, blending families, making choices to live simply and intentionally. A cousin remarks "We abide" which Amy riffs on: "To abide means to stand with someone, to suffer alongside someone. But it also means to live somewhere, and for me, abiding meant to live in that tender and tenuous place of knowing but not knowing. Knowing what would happen but not how it would happen. Knowing it would all end, but not what that ending would be like or how it would feel." 138
Show Less

Language

Original language

English

Physical description

240 p.; 6.38 inches

ISBN

0316352640 / 9780316352642
Page: 0.3236 seconds