Opening with his memory of what he was doing the day that his father shot himself, it is clear that Dietrich is an accomplished storyteller. His stories build up, circling back again and again to his hate and love for his father, each emotion battling it out in his head and his heart. His tone is warm and despite the anger and hurt he feels, an anger and hurt that led him to drop out of school in seventh grade and work years of backbreaking manual labor jobs, he can still find the good and the sweetness in a situation. His stories about his growing up are hard and honest and heartfelt and his arc from furious child to an adult who can extend grace to others, and most importantly to himself, is engaging to read. He has a folksy tone and his essential southerness weaves through the narrative in every word. Readers will come to know his love story with his wife and the bloodhound who was a huge piece of his heart. But most of all, they will come to know a man who is trying to live in hope, to live with his past but still know that he's "going to be okay." The writing is easy and accessible, doled out in vignettes, like sitting on a front porch swing listening to a man tell you all about himself. The first half of the book, when he is still a child, is a bit more engaging than the second half, where he struggles to get out of his own way. And his story of becoming Sean of the South is not as fully written as the earlier stories, perhaps because his avid fans already know who he is. Over all this is a good read for people who like memoirs, who like southern storytelling, who want a positive story about overcoming a sad and hard past, or who want an uplifting story right about now.
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
Review: Will the Circle Be Unbroken by Sean Dietrich
Opening with his memory of what he was doing the day that his father shot himself, it is clear that Dietrich is an accomplished storyteller. His stories build up, circling back again and again to his hate and love for his father, each emotion battling it out in his head and his heart. His tone is warm and despite the anger and hurt he feels, an anger and hurt that led him to drop out of school in seventh grade and work years of backbreaking manual labor jobs, he can still find the good and the sweetness in a situation. His stories about his growing up are hard and honest and heartfelt and his arc from furious child to an adult who can extend grace to others, and most importantly to himself, is engaging to read. He has a folksy tone and his essential southerness weaves through the narrative in every word. Readers will come to know his love story with his wife and the bloodhound who was a huge piece of his heart. But most of all, they will come to know a man who is trying to live in hope, to live with his past but still know that he's "going to be okay." The writing is easy and accessible, doled out in vignettes, like sitting on a front porch swing listening to a man tell you all about himself. The first half of the book, when he is still a child, is a bit more engaging than the second half, where he struggles to get out of his own way. And his story of becoming Sean of the South is not as fully written as the earlier stories, perhaps because his avid fans already know who he is. Over all this is a good read for people who like memoirs, who like southern storytelling, who want a positive story about overcoming a sad and hard past, or who want an uplifting story right about now.
1 comment:
I have had to disable the anonymous comment option to cut down on the spam and I apologize to those of you for whom this makes commenting a chore. I hope you'll still opt to leave me your thoughts. I love to hear what you think, especially so I know I'm not just whistling into the wind here at my computer.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
A tale of adultery that manages to withhold judgment as it traces the impact on all four people touched by an affair, Kylie Ladd's After...
-
What would you do if you opened the door to find a man you hadn't seen in 14 years standing on your doorstep, a man who disappeared from...
-
Greece has always been one of those places I'd love to see someday. But I, like so many other people, have always focused my future pla...
-
Book clubs can make you go outside of your usual reading choices. This can be wonderful, allowing you to discover books that you would ne...
-
Not too long ago there was a list going around the internet to determine if you are an introvert. I didn't really need to take it to kn...
-
Sometimes the media reports on someone shattering a glass ceiling. The fact that they are reporting on it being broken just goes to prove...
-
As the days get hotter and you start to pack your beach bag, you'll want to find appropriate reading and what better to read than a bo...
-
Corran Harrington's lyrical fiction, Follow the River Home, is a novella and related short stories centered around Daniel Arroyo, a Vi...
-
This is a big, gorgeous, appealing mix of a book. It's an epistolary novel. It has recipes. It has pictures and doodles. In short, i...
-
When we sit in our comfortable homes, on our cozy couches, warm, dry, and full, it is hard to imagine lives other than our own. Even if w...
Lovely review, thanks for sharing
ReplyDelete