Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Algonquin Books (2016), Edition: 1st Edition, 224 pages
Description
Biography & Autobiography. History. Nonfiction. HTML: "A memoir that shines with a bright spirit, a generous heart and an entertaining knack for celebrating absurdity."??The New York Times Book Review "This is Smith at her finest."??Library Journal, starred review Set deep in the mountains of Virginia, the Grundy of Lee Smith's youth was a place of coal miners, tent revivals, mountain music, drive-in theaters, and her daddy's dimestore. When she was sent off to college to gain some "culture," she understood that perhaps the richest culture she would ever know was the one she was leaving. Lee Smith's fiction has always lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the Appalachian South. But never before has she written her own story. Dimestore's fifteen essays are crushingly honest, wise and perceptive, and superbly entertaining. Together, they create an inspiring story of the birth of a writer and a poignant look at a way of life that has all but vanished… (more)
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LibraryThing member teresakayep
This memoir is actually a collection of essays about Smith’s life, both her childhood in Grundy, Virginia, and her adult life in North Carolina. It is her own personal story, not an analysis of the state of the South or anything like that. But her writing shows many of the reasons people treasure
Grundy, where Smith grew up, is a small Appalachian town that was built on coal. It’s one of the towns that has suffered economically from the loss of that industry, so much so that town leaders asked Walmart to come in to renew the town as part of a major rebuilding project to alleviate flooding. Smith writes of the town’s evolution, expressing both sadness for what is lost and guilty pleasure in enjoying the latte she could get in the growing town’s new coffee shop. She doesn’t present any analysis of the problem or its political implications, but her mixed feelings about the changes are evident.
Although for the most part, Smith’s memories of childhood in Grundy are warm with nostalgia, she doesn’t ignore the dark side of her world. Both of her parents dealt with mental illness. Her father said he was sometimes “kindly nervous,” his way of describing bipolar. William Styron’s Darkness Visible gave him great comfort. Lee Smith’s mother, too, had depression and anxiety. Both parents were hospitalized from time to time.
Smith also writes about the poverty and illiteracy in the region, again connecting it with stories from her own life and those of the people around her. “Lightning Storm” is a wonderful look at people just learning to write. But then there’s “On Lou’s Porch,” about a woman who wrote wonderful stories and poems for no one but her self. The South is not just one thing, even within one small region.
One of my favorite essays demonstrates the many faces of the South beautifully. Set in Carrboro, North Carolina, it uses the framework Smith’s taking an elderly lady friend to lunch at a sushi restaurant. Using this framework, she tells the story of the restaurant’s history and the people who’ve worked there.
Smith’s stories also delve into her writing career, a youthful trip down the Mississippi on a raft, and the death of her son. She is a master storyteller, and I’m glad to have had this opportunity to revisit her writing.
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their rural heritages—and the reasons some may decide to leave them behind.Grundy, where Smith grew up, is a small Appalachian town that was built on coal. It’s one of the towns that has suffered economically from the loss of that industry, so much so that town leaders asked Walmart to come in to renew the town as part of a major rebuilding project to alleviate flooding. Smith writes of the town’s evolution, expressing both sadness for what is lost and guilty pleasure in enjoying the latte she could get in the growing town’s new coffee shop. She doesn’t present any analysis of the problem or its political implications, but her mixed feelings about the changes are evident.
Although for the most part, Smith’s memories of childhood in Grundy are warm with nostalgia, she doesn’t ignore the dark side of her world. Both of her parents dealt with mental illness. Her father said he was sometimes “kindly nervous,” his way of describing bipolar. William Styron’s Darkness Visible gave him great comfort. Lee Smith’s mother, too, had depression and anxiety. Both parents were hospitalized from time to time.
Smith also writes about the poverty and illiteracy in the region, again connecting it with stories from her own life and those of the people around her. “Lightning Storm” is a wonderful look at people just learning to write. But then there’s “On Lou’s Porch,” about a woman who wrote wonderful stories and poems for no one but her self. The South is not just one thing, even within one small region.
One of my favorite essays demonstrates the many faces of the South beautifully. Set in Carrboro, North Carolina, it uses the framework Smith’s taking an elderly lady friend to lunch at a sushi restaurant. Using this framework, she tells the story of the restaurant’s history and the people who’ve worked there.
Smith’s stories also delve into her writing career, a youthful trip down the Mississippi on a raft, and the death of her son. She is a master storyteller, and I’m glad to have had this opportunity to revisit her writing.
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LibraryThing member MinDea
I didn't really enjoymany of the stories in this book. I felt like this was more about her previous books more than anything. I also didn't like how she listed things over and over. Disappointed.
LibraryThing member scenik1
Reviewed for LibraryThing Early Reviewers
I find Lee Smith so very easy to read and enjoy, and this memoir is no exception. I found myself re-reading certain passages for the sheer beauty of the writing. DIMESTORE is as entertaining as her fiction. She creates a complete visual and sensual world
Her background growing up in the mountains and hollers of Appalachia is very specific, but her love for place and people draws us in with a universal connection. While I found myself envying her being a writer and, in particular, being a Southern writer with her roots and sense of place, she made me appreciate my own memories and sense of place. When she says, “I was being raised to leave,” I know just what she means, and her saying it strikes a poignant, nostalgic chord that makes me grateful she brought such feelings to the surface. It is a sad and melancholy idea and true of many of us whether our parents wanted a more advantaged, stimulating life than our neighborhood provided or whether they were motivated by needing us to fulfill their dreams of an Ivy League education. Often in Lee’s memoir she captivates us with a good story, then takes our breath away with a nugget of nostalgic insight at the last line of the chapter. I appreciated the balance she showed in revealing the cost and benefit of enormous change, the loss of childhood’s place and the reality of adulthood’s needs and responsibilities. All this rang true and personal with me, even though I grew up a continent away from her Virginia mountains. I went away from home and returned thirty years later to confront enormous changes in my community, so I can appreciate the dismay she reflects as she drives the old roads and sees the shocking changes. I felt while reading DIMESTORE that she was expressing so many feelings on my behalf. She spends a good portion of the book writing about writing, but even then, she is also able to say a great deal about life and treasuring one’s present and past, about listening to the voices around you and in your heart, about coping with change and seeing the beauty and meaning in where you are. Smith makes us see our own past and present with renewed hope and appreciation, and when she writes of the lives of women reflected in their recipe boxes or, as a child, flattening cardboard boxes and riding them like a sled down the long grass covered hillsides or playing with the neighborhood children all over the mountain until they hear the mothers ring the dinner bell, I say, “Yes! It was just like that!” and thank her from the bottom of my own nostalgic heart.
I find Lee Smith so very easy to read and enjoy, and this memoir is no exception. I found myself re-reading certain passages for the sheer beauty of the writing. DIMESTORE is as entertaining as her fiction. She creates a complete visual and sensual world
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with her writing and gives us a very intimate, inside view of a writer’s heart.Her background growing up in the mountains and hollers of Appalachia is very specific, but her love for place and people draws us in with a universal connection. While I found myself envying her being a writer and, in particular, being a Southern writer with her roots and sense of place, she made me appreciate my own memories and sense of place. When she says, “I was being raised to leave,” I know just what she means, and her saying it strikes a poignant, nostalgic chord that makes me grateful she brought such feelings to the surface. It is a sad and melancholy idea and true of many of us whether our parents wanted a more advantaged, stimulating life than our neighborhood provided or whether they were motivated by needing us to fulfill their dreams of an Ivy League education. Often in Lee’s memoir she captivates us with a good story, then takes our breath away with a nugget of nostalgic insight at the last line of the chapter. I appreciated the balance she showed in revealing the cost and benefit of enormous change, the loss of childhood’s place and the reality of adulthood’s needs and responsibilities. All this rang true and personal with me, even though I grew up a continent away from her Virginia mountains. I went away from home and returned thirty years later to confront enormous changes in my community, so I can appreciate the dismay she reflects as she drives the old roads and sees the shocking changes. I felt while reading DIMESTORE that she was expressing so many feelings on my behalf. She spends a good portion of the book writing about writing, but even then, she is also able to say a great deal about life and treasuring one’s present and past, about listening to the voices around you and in your heart, about coping with change and seeing the beauty and meaning in where you are. Smith makes us see our own past and present with renewed hope and appreciation, and when she writes of the lives of women reflected in their recipe boxes or, as a child, flattening cardboard boxes and riding them like a sled down the long grass covered hillsides or playing with the neighborhood children all over the mountain until they hear the mothers ring the dinner bell, I say, “Yes! It was just like that!” and thank her from the bottom of my own nostalgic heart.
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LibraryThing member Dianekeenoy
This is the memoir, told in 15 essays, of the life of Lee Smith. It puts you right into her love of the Appalachian South where she grew up and which is always a main character in her books. While I've read several of her books, I didn't realize that she had written so many others and look forward
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to tracking them down so I can enjoy them as well. If you like Lee Smith or southern fiction, you will certainly enjoy this book. I did. Show Less
LibraryThing member SamSattler
Lee Smith is a wonderful storyteller, and for the last forty-five years she has been telling us stories about life in the Appalachian Mountains, a region and a people she knows like the back of her hand. Now, in Dimestore: A Writer’s Life, Smith finally shares her own story. I see that the
Dimestore begins with a straightforward preface in which the author remarks on the irony of being “raised to leave” the culture closest to her heart, the setting in which she would always feel most comfortable and welcome. But, for her sake, that is exactly what Smith’s family sought to do, recognizing early on that Smith had a talent that needed to be tested outside the confines of tiny Grundy, Virginia. A further irony is how the rest of the world finally came to appreciate the rich cultural uniqueness of her region’s people, and especially of their music and literature. Lee Smith would know, and merge, the best of both worlds.
Following the preface, Smith divides the book into short-story-like sections that provide her readers with glimpses into her life from childhood to late adulthood. She begins appropriately with a section titled “Dimestore” that recalls the role her father’s downtown Grundy dimestore played in shaping her into both the person and the writer she is today. As a girl she spent whole days wandering around the store, so familiar in that setting that she was largely invisible to the adults around her even when not observing them through the upstairs office window. She says that she “spent hours and hours upstairs in that office, observing the whole floor of the dimestore through the one-way glass window and reveling in my own power – nobody can see me, but I can see everybody!” Smith, already a budding writer, believes that this is how she “learned the position of the omniscient narrator, who sees and records everything, yet is never visible…the perfect education for a fiction writer.”
Smith goes on to tell stories about the health problems, both real and imagined, her parents suffered; her education, including visits to her Baltimore grandmother for “lady lessons;” her college girl rafting adventure down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Paducah, Kentucky to New Orleans; and the people she still so clearly remembers from her years in Grundy. But fans of Smith’s fiction are likely to appreciate most the “story” titled “A Life in Books” in which she recalls her early fascination with books, stories, and writing. Here Smith reveals what being a writer has taught her about life and about herself. She says that like Peter Taylor, she “writes in order to find out what she thinks,” and that no matter what she thinks she is writing about “it is all, finally, about me, often in some complicated way I won’t come to understand until years later.”
Lee Smith admits that writing is her addiction, and I, for one, and very thankful that it is.
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book’s subtitle changed somewhere between its publication as an Advance Readers Copy and its final version, but I actually find the ARC subtitle to be the more fitting of the two (“A Memoir in Stories”) because that perfectly describes the approach Smith takes here in recounting her life for readers.Dimestore begins with a straightforward preface in which the author remarks on the irony of being “raised to leave” the culture closest to her heart, the setting in which she would always feel most comfortable and welcome. But, for her sake, that is exactly what Smith’s family sought to do, recognizing early on that Smith had a talent that needed to be tested outside the confines of tiny Grundy, Virginia. A further irony is how the rest of the world finally came to appreciate the rich cultural uniqueness of her region’s people, and especially of their music and literature. Lee Smith would know, and merge, the best of both worlds.
Following the preface, Smith divides the book into short-story-like sections that provide her readers with glimpses into her life from childhood to late adulthood. She begins appropriately with a section titled “Dimestore” that recalls the role her father’s downtown Grundy dimestore played in shaping her into both the person and the writer she is today. As a girl she spent whole days wandering around the store, so familiar in that setting that she was largely invisible to the adults around her even when not observing them through the upstairs office window. She says that she “spent hours and hours upstairs in that office, observing the whole floor of the dimestore through the one-way glass window and reveling in my own power – nobody can see me, but I can see everybody!” Smith, already a budding writer, believes that this is how she “learned the position of the omniscient narrator, who sees and records everything, yet is never visible…the perfect education for a fiction writer.”
Smith goes on to tell stories about the health problems, both real and imagined, her parents suffered; her education, including visits to her Baltimore grandmother for “lady lessons;” her college girl rafting adventure down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Paducah, Kentucky to New Orleans; and the people she still so clearly remembers from her years in Grundy. But fans of Smith’s fiction are likely to appreciate most the “story” titled “A Life in Books” in which she recalls her early fascination with books, stories, and writing. Here Smith reveals what being a writer has taught her about life and about herself. She says that like Peter Taylor, she “writes in order to find out what she thinks,” and that no matter what she thinks she is writing about “it is all, finally, about me, often in some complicated way I won’t come to understand until years later.”
Lee Smith admits that writing is her addiction, and I, for one, and very thankful that it is.
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LibraryThing member LisbethE
I received a copy of this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers, in exchange for an honest review. I'd rate it a strong 4-4.5 stars, if they let me toss in a half star. It's good, really good, but maybe short of the magical I need for a five-star rating.
After reading Lee Smith's memoir, I'm
After reading Lee Smith's memoir, I'm
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inspired to go back and read through more of her fiction. I feel now like I know her, or at least her voice -- and she has a writer's voice that just rings out so clear and strong and true in this collection of essays/recollections that I found it difficult to put down. Her memories of her childhood don't sugarcoat her family background, but she delivers her family members and her home town to us with obvious love and appreciation in all of their dysfunctional glory. Show Less
LibraryThing member DMO
I admit that I have not read a Lee Smith book since I was in college and majoring in creative writing, but I have never forgotten her work. I was excited to see that I had received this as part of the ER giveaway.
Smith is a generous, confident, efficient writer, and it shows in these essays. In
Smith is a generous, confident, efficient writer, and it shows in these essays. In
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relatively few pages she is able to capture the ways that time is not linear, but rather layered in our lives. Our lives reflect the past, present, and future at all times, and Smith is able to show that in essays about mental illness, the character of a small, isolated town, and the joys of being with family at the holidays. I read this just after returning from a trip for a funeral for a member of my family, so perhaps the themes in this book resonated especially strongly. But any skillful writer--and Smith is certainly one--is able to tap into universal truths that transcend our experiences or cultural backgrounds. Show Less
LibraryThing member thebooklover2
Lee Smith's books are important to me. Having grow-up and lived all of my life in southern Appalachia, her stories resonate with me. Grundy is an area that I am familiar with and this made the stories really come alive for me.
Each and every story is a snapshot of the area, its people and its
This book is destined to become a classic in my view.
Each and every story is a snapshot of the area, its people and its
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culture. My particular favorite is the story about the falling cow. While my daughter did not want to hear about this, the story was a reflection of the landscape and explained a great deal of what it was like to live in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. This book is destined to become a classic in my view.
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LibraryThing member susan0316
I have read all of Lee Smith's books. She is one of the few authors that I will buy their books without even reading a review. Because of that, I have always wanted to meet her and talk to her about her writing. This book has made me feel like I sat down on a vine covered summer porch in a rocking
(I won a copy of this book from LibraryThing for a fair and honest review.)
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chair and had a long chat with her. Dimestore is a book of essays on her writing, her memories of growing up in Virginia, and the struggles and successes of her life. This was a rare glimpse into the life of a fantastic author. If you love Lee Smith, you will love this book. If you haven't read Lee Smith, read this book and it will make you want to read her novels. Trust me...it's a WIN WIN situation.(I won a copy of this book from LibraryThing for a fair and honest review.)
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LibraryThing member Jim53
A delightful collection of memoir-like essays. Smith makes us feel comfortable, as if she's telling us stories on the porch. She combines amusing looks at people's foibles with insightful views that honor the mountain folks' integrity. She exposes the love and pain that accompany her family, and
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she introduces us to writers she has admired such as James Still and Katharine Butler Hathaway. Dimestore lends insight into Smith's own writing and the writing of many writers who share her heritage. Show Less
LibraryThing member debrarbell
Excellent read! Loved every detail of "Dimestore". Lee Smith reminisces her childhood with detail and finesse.
LibraryThing member terrylynn
I have read many of lee smiths books. This was an advance copy of her memoir. I have always liked her books but I loved this. Stories are told about her time growing up in southwest Virginia, as I did. She talks about a time, non existent now, from makeout point, the dime store,dancing to the song,
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Deep Purple. So many things she describes, my siblings and I experienced. I can't wait for my brothers to read this book so they can enjoy a true flashback in time. Lee Smiths prose is so soft and beautiful I hated for her stories to end. Show Less
LibraryThing member sunqueen
Excellent read by one of my favorite authors. She uses all of her considerable talents to weave the true stories of her childhood into a fascinating memoir.
LibraryThing member cransell
Thoroughly enjoyable memoir of growing up in Appalachian Virginia, with parents who were "kindly nervous" and Smith's development of herself as an author. Although I grew up in the "urban" rather than rural South, Smith really captured some truths about my own experience as a Southerner.
LibraryThing member tangledthread
This is a collection of essays is gathered as memoir of author Lee Smith's life and the role her writing has played in that life. The essays begin with her childhood in Grundy, Va., a small mining town on a river surrounded by mountains. Their are stories of family, being an adolescent in the 50's,
I've read several of Lee Smith's books, my favorite being Fair and Tender Ladies. Her writing style shines through and her thoughts about life as a writer are illuminating.
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a young adult in the 60's, and her adult life including the loss of a child. I've read several of Lee Smith's books, my favorite being Fair and Tender Ladies. Her writing style shines through and her thoughts about life as a writer are illuminating.
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LibraryThing member Bookish59
The grass is always greener somewhere other than where we've grown up. Lee Smith, growing up in Grundy, Virginia believes this until she learns better. Her large family and community are close-knit, supportive, warm and friendly. She learns much from her father's Dimestore but takes life, and her
When young she loved reading, telling stories and writing about exotic locations and characters. She avoided writing about what she knew best, Grundy, until she attended college and took courses with Louis D. Rubin, Jr. who became her favorite professor. Hearing Eudora Welty speak, and reading James Still's River of Earth were life-changing. Smith was thunderstruck recognizing what a treasure trove her home was, and she now understood why so many brilliant writers had come from Appalachia.
Her descriptive memoirs are powerful and capture the essence of small town America from an earlier time when jello, caring and participating in community events were big through the years of mining companies closing making Grundy a ghost town, and the process of the town growing up and joining the 21st Century.
Excellent read.
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parents' nurturing and love for granted. When young she loved reading, telling stories and writing about exotic locations and characters. She avoided writing about what she knew best, Grundy, until she attended college and took courses with Louis D. Rubin, Jr. who became her favorite professor. Hearing Eudora Welty speak, and reading James Still's River of Earth were life-changing. Smith was thunderstruck recognizing what a treasure trove her home was, and she now understood why so many brilliant writers had come from Appalachia.
Her descriptive memoirs are powerful and capture the essence of small town America from an earlier time when jello, caring and participating in community events were big through the years of mining companies closing making Grundy a ghost town, and the process of the town growing up and joining the 21st Century.
Excellent read.
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LibraryThing member reedread
Lee Smith weaves a web around a town so deftly that you feel you must have been born there too. Her stories of Grundy in Appalachia are raw yet heartwarming. The characters seem to be people that you know and love.
My favorite story was about Lou Crabtree, a downhome writer who lived her craft. Her
Smith's accounts of her hometown bring to light the essence of what it means to be human, living with other humans. All readers can relate, and will enjoy reading this masterful collection of stories.
My favorite story was about Lou Crabtree, a downhome writer who lived her craft. Her
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description of her writing time is priceless and echoes the feelings of creative people in all genres. A spirited woman, she became an inspiration to the author and has much wisdom to share.Smith's accounts of her hometown bring to light the essence of what it means to be human, living with other humans. All readers can relate, and will enjoy reading this masterful collection of stories.
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LibraryThing member WillowOne
Lee Smith has a written a wonderful book full of short stories. These stories tell all about growing up in Appalachia and the people, customs, and happenings that took place then. She talks about how this has shaped her as a person and an author even though her mother tried to make sure she turned
Because I live in Appalachia I find the book to be memory inducing. This look at small town life and how those that have lived and live it are shaped by their communities, the "talk", the "bubble" if you will is a voice that needs to be heard.
I received this book for the purpose of review.
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out with a little more class. She loved growing up in the hills and hollars, spying on neighbors or sitting in her Daddy's dimestore and then writing stories from what she learned. This practice would get her in trouble on more than one occasion. Because I live in Appalachia I find the book to be memory inducing. This look at small town life and how those that have lived and live it are shaped by their communities, the "talk", the "bubble" if you will is a voice that needs to be heard.
I received this book for the purpose of review.
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LibraryThing member 23points
I received this through the early reviewers program.
I haven't read any of Lee Smith's other books, but I'm certainly interested now. I thought this was a lovely, endearing, plainspoken group of stories that were so easy to keep turning the page and reading. There are always a few stories that
I haven't read any of Lee Smith's other books, but I'm certainly interested now. I thought this was a lovely, endearing, plainspoken group of stories that were so easy to keep turning the page and reading. There are always a few stories that
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resonate less than others (for me, I didn't care for the final chapter which was kind of a disappointing way to end the book). The story about her son Josh and the writer Lou Crabtree might have been my favorites. Show Less
LibraryThing member kykim
Wasn't a book that I could get interested in and didn't finish it
LibraryThing member dottieph
Delightful. These short stoies reminded me of my own visits to our local "Dimestore" in Western MA.
LibraryThing member clue
Lee Smith grew up in a small Virginia town in the mountains of Appalachia. Her mother was a former school teacher and her dad was the owner of the town dimestore. Lee loved Grundy and all the people who lived there, but she was "raised to leave" and didn't live in Grundy beyond her high school
This is not a sentimental account but rather a collection of essays that show how a small town upbringing and Southern culture created a writer. Now in her seventies, Lee has written an unflinching account of a life that always had writing (and reading) at it's core.
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years.This is not a sentimental account but rather a collection of essays that show how a small town upbringing and Southern culture created a writer. Now in her seventies, Lee has written an unflinching account of a life that always had writing (and reading) at it's core.
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LibraryThing member ElizabethTanous
Lee's long awaited apologia for the culture of her beloved Appalachia and its denizens has been well worth the wait. In a departure from her work in fiction she does stay true to form refusing to romanticize her beloved mountains although they ring with music, literature and art from centuries of
Although a child of some privilege herself being related to various and sundry shopkeepers, insurance brokerages and the granddaughter of the County Treasurer, her delight in sharing the stories of these places remains with the common folk who inhabit the area not those nearest her. An astute observer as demonstrated in her fictional work, her talent for drawing attention to the commonplace and mundane as holy work writ large is ably deployed in this collection of thought vignettes. As any Southern writer worth his or her salt will do, the sensory images parlayed through her wonderful recollections of food served and how resonates with an achingly familiar love of regional tastes. Honestly, it is so very Midwestern in the experience of sitting on a cool cotton blanket in the heat of summer while enjoying deviled eggs, fried chicken and fresh berries under a shade tree that it is uncanny how very similar the two cultures are.
Smith's sense of place and persona is spot on touchingly sympathetic and wry. Grandmother's voile dress and brooch sets of which she owned hundreds brought an immediate memory of my own back . Her mother's love of reading and crafting represented so perfectly by her recipe box upon which she had decopaged is so very southern a touch as is Lee's observation that the box and its contents were a repository for all phases of her mother's life. The places, hopes, dreams and decades of change in palate all demonstrated though this simple metal box is precisely her strength as a writer and observer of the holy, the sacred in the commonplace.
To be noted the chapters in which she shares the life and death of her son, Josh are without compare. Bridging the generations between her parents long term mental illness' and that suffered nobly by her son, make up the large part of the book. It is much to my delight that someone else found Styron's book on depression , Darkness Made Visible, a lifesaving explanation of what it is like to live with disabling mental illness in a world that seems determined to blame the patient for the disease despite evidence overwhelmingly to the contrary. I too loved Styron's book and it spared my precarious grip on what my beloved late family members suffered with their depression that did eventually take their lives. In Chapter 3, Kindly Nervous her portrayal of her father's inability to draw one thing, any thing that would make him happy, he drew nothing. A figure with no features whatsoever. Hard to catch mercy indeed.
That is the beauty of this well crafted memoir. The passage through the most glorious of experiences, her sense of flow from teaching others to write and the lifelong friendships developed in that context with one Lou Crabtree, are well placed against a backdrop of generations of crippling depression and suicide running throughout the family tree are honest and resonate with life experiences we all have. On Lou's Porch is perhaps my favorite chapter notably for her most lovely poem, Salvation. Breathless and thank you Lou Crabtree wherever you are for that poem.
I heartily recommend this memoir for those who enjoy that genre but also to readers who are, like this one, hopelessly in love with novels in which a sense of place informs, buttresses and forms the skeleton of the people and characters that inhabit the landscape. You are in the hands of a master craftswoman here, enjoy this for a wonderful summer read and keep tissues handy. Not only because her chapter Goodbye to the Sunset Man about her son's all too brief life and death is wrenchingly beautiful but because for much of the book you will simply wish you were there with her. Tell me more is the highest praise one can give a memoir and indeed, Lee , tell me more.
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Scottish, Welsh, Irish and English traditions. While there is little doubt as to her devotion to the region and telling the stories of its people she judiciously avoids any withholding of the near desperate poverty, drug abuse and the ravages of environmental damage that are omnipresent in that part of the United States.Although a child of some privilege herself being related to various and sundry shopkeepers, insurance brokerages and the granddaughter of the County Treasurer, her delight in sharing the stories of these places remains with the common folk who inhabit the area not those nearest her. An astute observer as demonstrated in her fictional work, her talent for drawing attention to the commonplace and mundane as holy work writ large is ably deployed in this collection of thought vignettes. As any Southern writer worth his or her salt will do, the sensory images parlayed through her wonderful recollections of food served and how resonates with an achingly familiar love of regional tastes. Honestly, it is so very Midwestern in the experience of sitting on a cool cotton blanket in the heat of summer while enjoying deviled eggs, fried chicken and fresh berries under a shade tree that it is uncanny how very similar the two cultures are.
Smith's sense of place and persona is spot on touchingly sympathetic and wry. Grandmother's voile dress and brooch sets of which she owned hundreds brought an immediate memory of my own back . Her mother's love of reading and crafting represented so perfectly by her recipe box upon which she had decopaged is so very southern a touch as is Lee's observation that the box and its contents were a repository for all phases of her mother's life. The places, hopes, dreams and decades of change in palate all demonstrated though this simple metal box is precisely her strength as a writer and observer of the holy, the sacred in the commonplace.
To be noted the chapters in which she shares the life and death of her son, Josh are without compare. Bridging the generations between her parents long term mental illness' and that suffered nobly by her son, make up the large part of the book. It is much to my delight that someone else found Styron's book on depression , Darkness Made Visible, a lifesaving explanation of what it is like to live with disabling mental illness in a world that seems determined to blame the patient for the disease despite evidence overwhelmingly to the contrary. I too loved Styron's book and it spared my precarious grip on what my beloved late family members suffered with their depression that did eventually take their lives. In Chapter 3, Kindly Nervous her portrayal of her father's inability to draw one thing, any thing that would make him happy, he drew nothing. A figure with no features whatsoever. Hard to catch mercy indeed.
That is the beauty of this well crafted memoir. The passage through the most glorious of experiences, her sense of flow from teaching others to write and the lifelong friendships developed in that context with one Lou Crabtree, are well placed against a backdrop of generations of crippling depression and suicide running throughout the family tree are honest and resonate with life experiences we all have. On Lou's Porch is perhaps my favorite chapter notably for her most lovely poem, Salvation. Breathless and thank you Lou Crabtree wherever you are for that poem.
I heartily recommend this memoir for those who enjoy that genre but also to readers who are, like this one, hopelessly in love with novels in which a sense of place informs, buttresses and forms the skeleton of the people and characters that inhabit the landscape. You are in the hands of a master craftswoman here, enjoy this for a wonderful summer read and keep tissues handy. Not only because her chapter Goodbye to the Sunset Man about her son's all too brief life and death is wrenchingly beautiful but because for much of the book you will simply wish you were there with her. Tell me more is the highest praise one can give a memoir and indeed, Lee , tell me more.
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LibraryThing member m.belljackson
With a title like DIMESTORE, this book already breathes anticipation.
It draws many old-timers into their own memories before even opening the book:
Woolworths! Ben Franklin! Five and Ten!
And while Lee Smith does deliver good stories around her Father's Dimestore,
it never fully gives a real feeling
The smells, the sounds, the entry and door, the aisles, the floors,
the colors and first tastes of the candy in glass cases that only opened
from the back,
the open wood cases of all the ??? merchandise...all this is missing.
The best parts were the best Preface ever (invoking a longing and nostalgia for
people and places never seen or heard of) and the author's memories of Ralph Stanley and her hero,
Lou Crabtree in "On Lou's Porch."
Many of the other stories seem oddly unfinished: How did she explain her absence at the presentation she'd been invited to in Dimestore? What happened after she couldn't blow out the Baked Alaska?
Compared with Hillbilly Elegy, this sounds like Hillbilly Heaven > not much ignorance and
where's the racism?
Good quotes:
"Somebody one said there are only two plots in fiction...somebody takes a trip and
a stranger comes to town...." Fun to argue!
"When you write fiction, you up the ante, generally speaking, since real life rarely affords enough excitement or conflict to spice up a page sufficiently."
The paperback cover offers a provocative story on its own.
More photographs would have been really welcome.
It draws many old-timers into their own memories before even opening the book:
Woolworths! Ben Franklin! Five and Ten!
And while Lee Smith does deliver good stories around her Father's Dimestore,
it never fully gives a real feeling
Show More
of place, of actually being inside of the store. The smells, the sounds, the entry and door, the aisles, the floors,
the colors and first tastes of the candy in glass cases that only opened
from the back,
the open wood cases of all the ??? merchandise...all this is missing.
The best parts were the best Preface ever (invoking a longing and nostalgia for
people and places never seen or heard of) and the author's memories of Ralph Stanley and her hero,
Lou Crabtree in "On Lou's Porch."
Many of the other stories seem oddly unfinished: How did she explain her absence at the presentation she'd been invited to in Dimestore? What happened after she couldn't blow out the Baked Alaska?
Compared with Hillbilly Elegy, this sounds like Hillbilly Heaven > not much ignorance and
where's the racism?
Good quotes:
"Somebody one said there are only two plots in fiction...somebody takes a trip and
a stranger comes to town...." Fun to argue!
"When you write fiction, you up the ante, generally speaking, since real life rarely affords enough excitement or conflict to spice up a page sufficiently."
The paperback cover offers a provocative story on its own.
More photographs would have been really welcome.
Show Less
LibraryThing member rmckeown
I have never read any of Lee Smith’s novels, but I have a read a few minor things written by her. I am not sure why this is, but when I received an advanced readers copy of her memoir, Dimestore, -- her first work of non-fiction -- I decided to discover what I was missing. And I was missing a
According to the dust jacket, Lee – who lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina -- began to write stories at the age of nine and sold them for a nickel each. As an adult she has 17 works of fiction and has won numerous awards, including “an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel The Last Girls was a New York Times best seller and won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She talked a lot about this book, and I think I will get a copy of that novel next.
Lee talks about her early desire to be a writer, and the autobiographical nature of one of her characters. She writes, “Although I Don’t usually write autobiographical fiction, the main character in one of my short stories sounds suspiciously like the girl I used to be: ‘More than anything else in the world, I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t want to learn to write, of course. I just wanted to be a writer, and I often picture myself poised at the foggy edge of a cliff someplace in the south of France, wearing a cape, drawing furiously on a long cigarette, hollow-cheeked and haunted. I had been romantically dedicated to the grand idea of “being a writer” ever since I could remember” (63). Lee was lucky to have discovered her passion so early and had the grit and the talent to carry through to success.
Lee tells a story about meeting an elderly woman who loved to write, and, as Smith found out, she had stumbled on a truly talented writer. One day, they went for a walk in rural Virginia. She writes, “‘Here honey,’ she said, leaning over to pick up a buck eye as we walked back beneath the sunset sky. ‘Put this in your pocket. It’s good luck. And get your head out of them clouds, honey. Pay attention.’ We went back to sit on her porch, talking to everybody that came by. We had potato chips and Moon Pies for dinner. // I’ve been trying to pay attention ever since, realizing that writing is not about fame, or even publication. It is not about exalted language, abstract themes, or the escapades of glamorous people. It is about our own real world and our own real lives and understanding what happens to us day by day, it is about playing with children and listening to old people” (91).
This pleasant memoir is as enjoyable as a memoir can be. If you are interested in all the ins and outs for the art and craft of writing, Lee Smith’s Dimestore, is a great place to begin your own journey. We all have stories we share all the time. Get yourself a pencil or a pen or a computer, sit down, and write. 5 stars
--Jim, 8/1/16
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lot! She is a clever, smooth, and interesting writer, and this memoir became so much more than a story of her growing up and becoming a writer. The first part of the book covers that, but the later chapters examine the writer in herself and how a reader can apply that to her daily writings.According to the dust jacket, Lee – who lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina -- began to write stories at the age of nine and sold them for a nickel each. As an adult she has 17 works of fiction and has won numerous awards, including “an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel The Last Girls was a New York Times best seller and won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She talked a lot about this book, and I think I will get a copy of that novel next.
Lee talks about her early desire to be a writer, and the autobiographical nature of one of her characters. She writes, “Although I Don’t usually write autobiographical fiction, the main character in one of my short stories sounds suspiciously like the girl I used to be: ‘More than anything else in the world, I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t want to learn to write, of course. I just wanted to be a writer, and I often picture myself poised at the foggy edge of a cliff someplace in the south of France, wearing a cape, drawing furiously on a long cigarette, hollow-cheeked and haunted. I had been romantically dedicated to the grand idea of “being a writer” ever since I could remember” (63). Lee was lucky to have discovered her passion so early and had the grit and the talent to carry through to success.
Lee tells a story about meeting an elderly woman who loved to write, and, as Smith found out, she had stumbled on a truly talented writer. One day, they went for a walk in rural Virginia. She writes, “‘Here honey,’ she said, leaning over to pick up a buck eye as we walked back beneath the sunset sky. ‘Put this in your pocket. It’s good luck. And get your head out of them clouds, honey. Pay attention.’ We went back to sit on her porch, talking to everybody that came by. We had potato chips and Moon Pies for dinner. // I’ve been trying to pay attention ever since, realizing that writing is not about fame, or even publication. It is not about exalted language, abstract themes, or the escapades of glamorous people. It is about our own real world and our own real lives and understanding what happens to us day by day, it is about playing with children and listening to old people” (91).
This pleasant memoir is as enjoyable as a memoir can be. If you are interested in all the ins and outs for the art and craft of writing, Lee Smith’s Dimestore, is a great place to begin your own journey. We all have stories we share all the time. Get yourself a pencil or a pen or a computer, sit down, and write. 5 stars
--Jim, 8/1/16
Show Less
Language
Original language
English
ISBN
9781616205027