Apples And Oranges: My Brother And Me, Lost And Found (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
I just couldn't warm to this book. As far as memoirs go, it really didn't work for me, and I found that frustrating. I thought that the best parts of the book were those that involved Marie Brenner's reporting skills, such as relating the complicated histories of preceding generations of her family and discussions of apple farming. I felt that she was too close to her own story in trying to sort out her always-prickly relationship with her dying brother Carl, and I didn't really feel that I gained much insight into either of them as people. Brenner does well at relating what happened, and though she's trying to get to the why, I didn't really get as much of a sense of that as I wanted to, as a reader. For the most part, the book didn't resonate emotionally for me, and that's usually a quality I look for in a memoir. Having said that, though, I should note that I did hang in for the whole thing, and it did eventually all click for me in the last seventy-five pages or so.As you can see, I'm having some trouble writing objectively about this one - but I suppose that if I found it frustrating enough to want more from it, it did connect with me, just not necessarily as I would have wanted it to. One of those books that I had to force myself to finish. The book is about the tumultuous relationship between the author and her brother and how they became "closer" through her brother getting diagnosed with cancer. Confusing at parts because the author jumps all over the place in regards to dates, events, etc. and makes many references to people, places, pop culture that I've never heard of before. It may have been insightful for the author to write this "memoir," but I don't think it needed to be published for the rest of us to somehow learn anything from it.
What do You think about Apples And Oranges: My Brother And Me, Lost And Found (2008)?
At times it was hard to follow. Brenner has a gift with words, and I did enjoy this work.
—Pomer
AuthorsOnTheWeb Internet Marketing campaign for author/journalist Marie Brenner.
—nicoleannsmith
Well done memoir about a difficult sibling relationship.
—sifterlii
