|
Bigger than Life, Bigger than Life, 0803229763, 0-8032-2976-3, 978-0-8032-2976-1, 9780803229761, Dinah Lenney, American Lives, Bigger than Life, 0803206240, 0-8032-0624-0, 978-0-8032-0624-3, 9780803206243, Dinah Lenney, American Lives, Bigger than Life, 0803232675, 0-8032-3267-5, 978-0-8032-3267-9, 9780803232679, Dinah Lenney, American Live
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Nelson Gross led an outsized life—one in which he played many roles: father, brother, husband, politician, entrepreneur. When he was killed by a couple of teenagers in a botched abduction and robbery, the murder shook his family in predictable and terrible ways. For his daughter, Dinah Lenney, the parent of her own young children, the loss sparked a self-reckoning that led to this book, which is both a meditation on grief and a coming of age story. By turns funny and sad, frustrating and fulfilling, her candid memoir conducts readers through marriage and divorce, blended and broken families—and, finally, the kinds of conflict that infect the best of us under the best of circumstances. In the end, Lenney leaves us with the sense that in spite of extraordinary events—as with most families—it is mutual forgiveness and love that lead us to empathy, acceptance, and the will to carry on.  Dinah Lenney received her BA from Yale and a Certificate of Acting from the Neighborhood Playhouse School. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and her essays and reviews have appeared in national journals and papers, including the New York and the Los Angeles Times. Continuing to work on stage and screen, Dinah's in the middle of her 14th season as Nurse Shirley on NBC's critically acclaimed ER. She teaches acting as well as writing, at UCLA, and at USC. Dinah is the co-author of Acting for Young Actors (Watson-Guptill, Back Stage Books). She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.
 “[A] fine memoir. . . . [N]o abuse, drug use, crazy parents or even a hot Italian lover, just beautiful sentences, deep emotions and intellectual stimulation.”—Samantha Dunn, E! Online, “The Books You Must Read: Picks for 2007” “This affecting memoir ends on a note of grace as Lenney acknowledges her hard-won peace with her father’s memory and his murder. . . . Such transcendent realizations elevate Bigger than Life . . . beyond an account of the bombastic life and brutal death of Nelson Gross to speak of life and healing found in the midst of tragedy.”—Paula L. Woods, Los Angeles Times Book Review “The subject matter is grim but the writing is anything but, as Lenney, with an artful layering of details and remembered conversations, brings her complex, confounding father back to literary life.”—Los Angeles Magazine “Before his murder, Dinah Lenney’s father was Bigger than Life but looms larger in death.”—Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair “In one sense, [Lenney’s] book can be seen as therapy, a way of purging a decade’s worth of inner turmoil. But the story also explores a broader issue, the way the death of one man can affect the lives of many people. . . . Not a typical ‘survivor's autobiography,’ but a deeply affecting one.”—Booklist "Vivid, revealing, and meditative. . . . [T]he narrator is poignantly self-aware, brutally honest. . . . [This] is a book well worth reading, not only for some dazzling chapters and evocative details about the American justice system, but also for the contribution it makes to the body of American literature about fathers."—Fourth Genre “A brilliant contribution to autobiographical, literary non-fiction; the author takes us right into her consciousness, and recreates thought and feelings with passion and restraint. This book is a model of engaged and engaging memoir-writing.”—Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body and The Art of the Personal Essay “I read this in one sitting, transported into the life of a man I now feel I knew personally. It’s a compelling story about death and the way life goes on around it—beautifully written and perfectly orchestrated, a book that is as enlightening as it is easy to read.”—Susan Cheever, author of Home before Dark: A Biographical Memoir of John Cheever by His Daughter “A driving vocal performance—tour de force momentum for pages at a stretch, and studded throughout with hard-earned human insight. While Lenney can be bracingly acerbic, the affection moving through this work is tidal.”—Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
|
|
Also of Interest
|
|
|
|