Between Them: Remembering My Parents

Most of us will be forgotten in three generations. All our stories and what made us who we are, in most cases even our very names, won't be on anyone's lips or minds. Ford's memoir of his parents serves as an example of what we should all try to leave behind for future generations.Published decades after both Ford's parents died, and now in his 70s, it focuses on memories of his parents. His father, a traveling salesman, he lost a few days after his 16th birthday in 1960. He got two decades more [...]

Il sentimentalista riluttanteHo fatto fatica a trovare motivi di interesse in questo libro di autore pluripremiato. Richard Ford parla di se, e (soprattutto) dei suo genitori con tutto l’affetto e profondità possibile, con garbo e bella scrittura, descrive l’evolversi dell’America dalla grande depressione alla classe media dagli anni ’50, il mutare lento delle cose e dei sentimenti…tutti temi che potrebbero toccare, interessare, persino commuovereinvece… mi sono risultati distanti, [...]

(2.5) This short family memoir reminds me most of Elsewhere, Richard Russo’s memoir of his mother. Richard was the only child born to Parker and Edna Ford, 15 years after their wedding and once they were both well into their thirties – no common occurrence in the 1940s. He grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, but his father’s work as a traveling salesman took him all over the South and kept him on the road Monday through Friday. That pattern of weekday absenteeism, plus the fact that Parker di [...]

Perché amo le autobiografie o i memoir? La risposta la trovo in questo libretto di Ford: i momenti più importanti della vita non vengono quasi notati dagli altri, eppure quando la letteratura o la poesia li traducono in parole assumono aspetti particolari e profondi. E' così che nasce questo ritratto delicato, sfumato, di una coppia di americani qualunque, con una vita normale, forse triste e banale a guardarla da fuori, ma che diventa preziosa testimonianza se sono i propri genitori. Qualcun [...]

One of my self-imposed chores is the family's ironing, done about once a week while standing at the ironing board in the laundry room. Too lazy to bring the board and iron out to the living room so I can watch tv, instead I have a radio tuned to Rhode Island's NPR station. It was then that I heard Terry Gross interview Richard Ford regarding this memoir of his parents, and I knew immediately that it was a book I'd be interested in.This memoir is more of a musing on the relationship of Ford's par [...]

Entrare nel passato è un'operazione incerta, dal momento che il passato cerca sempre, riuscendovi però solo a metà, di fare di noi quello che siamo . Il fatto che vite e morti passino spesso inosservate ha ispirato specificamente questo piccolo libro sui miei genitori e definito il suo compito.Le vite dei nostri genitori ,anche quelle avvolte dall'oscurità, sono per noi la prima , forte assicurazione che gli eventi umani contano. Noi siamo qui , dopo tutto.Il futuro è imprevedibile e perico [...]

Mr Ford has the rare gift of talking about the most difficult and important things in the most simple way, which hits the nail on the head, every time.This memoir of his parents is loving and moving, a contemplation on lives lived and loved, on mortality and togetherness. He is clear sighted towards his parents, honouring them in the best way. The second part about his mother is one of the most tender and heart felt things I have read in a very long time and it really hit home with me. The way h [...]

I really enjoy Richard Ford's writing style in his fiction, and this was carried over into this short memoir of both his parents. I really enjoyed it, but it was an unusual book. The first half is a memoir of his father, who died when Ford was 16, and the second half a memoir of his mother who lived into early old age. They were written 30 years apart. But more interesting than the structure is that really Ford knows very little about his father's life especially, and a lot of his half is questi [...]

Richard Ford is one of America's great writers. He has a way of answering the question "what is the meaning of life?" in the most direct way possible--by writing about living. "Between Them" is two separate memoirs, one of his mother and one of his father, written 30 years apart. In the memoirs, Ford describes the seeming unextraordinary lives of his parents, which at first blush seems to be a self indulgent exercise but upon further reflection depicts the fairly extraordinary routine of living. [...]

From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the week:Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Ford tells us the stories of his parents, taken from a newly published memoir.After his parents married they took to the road. Father worked at the Faultless Company, which took them to "Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, and a small part of Tennessee, a slice of Florida, a corner of Texas, all of Mississippi." On the road they stayed at motels and ate in diners. They had fun. They 'roistered'.Abridged by Katrin WilliamsProduce [...]

I don't usually read memoirs. Perhaps I have an unreasoning prejudice against them born of some reading experience in my distant past, but, generally, I just don't enjoy them. But I will always make an exception for Richard Ford.Ford has written this short (less than 200 pages) memoir of his parents and of his experience growing up with them. It essentially consists of two long essays written some thirty years apart in time. Both were written after his parents' deaths. The one about his mother w [...]

I simply adore Richard Ford! There's a reason why he is one of the greatest contemporary American writers. His skills to portray the everyday life is remarkable and there is so much truth in his words. Now he gives us the story of his parents - separately, together, with him, the child between them - and he writes with such tenderness and sincere reflection. Imagine him telling you this story face to face, cause that's how it feels. An excellent and joyful read.

Between Them, this book's title, is meant, in part, to suggest that by being born I literally came between my parents, a virtual place where I was sheltered and adored as long as they were alive. But it is also meant, in part, to portray their ineradicable singleness – both in marriage, and in their lives as my parents.Between Them is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford's biography of his parents, presented in two parts: A section focusing on his mother, written thirty years ago when sh [...]

A thought-provoking memoir by an exquisite writer. Richard Ford explores the lives of his parents before he knew them. He makes sense of them as real people; he acknowledges their shortcomings and accepts their imperfections. More important, he accepts the reality of the imperfect life. He writes about his father: "I was his son. I can recognize that life is short and has inadequacies. Most everything but love goes away." He says that "normal life is the interstitial time" -- often the moments t [...]

No se tomen este libro como una biografía novela. Son simplemente dos textos entre los que distan 30 años y que tiene más de necesidad del autor por publicar algo en 2017 que de libro al uso.

Una historia muy sencilla y bonita. Contada en dos partes. Da para pensar.

Though very ordinary people, Richard Ford has breathed a very fresh and knowing look at his parents happy and satisfying marriage. He somehow remembers most interactions and expands on them many decades after they took place. In reading his earlier fiction, there is a hint of his family's past. It is a lovely memoir. Ford has taken his memoir to a high level and fans of this genre should not miss this one.

My parents lived at about the same time period as Richard Ford's parents. Like them, they didn't talk about themselves, either. That was the way it was then for people who lived ordinary lives. They loved each other, worked hard, took care of their children, and didn't expect notice, except from each other. So much in this memoir resonates for me.I am not familiar with Ford's other work. But I have the greatest respect for this one. Such a beautiful restraint in the writing. There are images and [...]

Richard Ford mentions that a friend who read this memoir thought that it was sad, though Ford himself doesn't think so. I agree with his friend. Ford's parents were everyday ordinary Americans who suffered ordinary American lives. Ford's father worked hard, had some kicks, and died young. Ford's mother was devoted to his father and never really moved on after his father's death. It is sad in that sense, and unremarkable. Ford's honesty about this and about himself is what makes the story worth r [...]

2 stars for the first half about his father, but 5 for the second half about his mother. The second half was intimate and insightful and occasionally uncomfortable to read, but I enjoyed every page.

I'm not sure how I found this book. I just know that one day I was looking at books that won Gordon Burns Prize. I discovered it was available through my library's Overdrive site, so I checked it out.It is actually two memoirs written decades apart. One about the author's father who died when he was a teenager, and the other his mother who died years later. His parents were old school Americans. From a time, when you could manage to survive by your wits. The author talks about how he knew his pa [...]

4,5 stelle

Richard Ford, undoubtedly one of the most rigorous American writers of his generation, has written a very human, tender and compassionate memoir of his parents' life. The book is actually split into two narratives: the first part tells about Ford's father, a remarkably simple and short life, characterized by his love for his wife and by the endless travels across the South of the US, as a salesman.The second half of the book, written 30 years before the first half, is dedicated to the figure of [...]

What this memoir really made me want to do is read something else by Richard Ford. The guy can write. In fact, my overall impression of the entire book is that he could write a gripping tale about a person lying on a couch watching television.Because his parents, about whom he writes lovingly, are just not that interesting. So he wrote a book about two basically pedestrian lives - that of a travelling salesman and his wife. There's really not a whole lot about Ford himself unless you read betwee [...]

SOLO PER FORDISTI SPINTI Ineludibile per comprendere il suo universo poetico.Composto da due parti, nella prima prevale il ricordo del padre (con tratti più epici, forse perché il ricordo si arresta all'infanzia, causa un attacco cardiaco che se lo è portato via), mentre la seconda è dedicata alla madre (con cui c'è stata una più lunga frequentazione, e quindi l'epica stempera nel quotidiano).L'affannarsi a dichiarare di aver avuto "un'infanzia felicissima" narrando nel contempo un vissuto [...]

This is a beautifully rendered portrait of the author's parents; it's really two novellas each devoted to one parent. Remarkably, the author is a late, only child who has managed to make the story about his parents rather than about himself. Despite his age at their respective deaths, entering adolescence and then early adulthood, making his struggles with anger/growing up hard to temper in the retelling. These are parents whose lives, dreams and loves are noteworthy for their plainness and for [...]

This is a very moving and thought provoking memoir about the author's parents. Although their lives were 'unremarkable' in many ways, Ford's attempts to see them as individuals (as opposed to 'parents') brings up many emotions in the reader. It is a short book but very powerful in what it has to say about our relationships with our parents and their relationship with each other . I caused me to reflect on my own parents lives, what I know about them as individuals and what I will never know.I hi [...]

Richard Ford has a unique style. He creates a mood of detachment based on keen observation of material things and individual behavior. In this brief portrait of his father and mother he somewhat surprisingly sustains this mood of detachment, though obviously he experienced the warmth and immediate intimacy of family life with his parents. The book consists of two chapters, one focused on his father and the second dealing with his mother. They were written 30 years apart, the first, on his mother [...]

Memoirs about parents tend to fall into two categories: either discoveries made after their deaths of their previously unknown heroic or, sometimes, disreputable lives or an account of the gradual onset of dementia. Keggie Carew's excellent book about her father, Dadland, covered both of those. Richard Ford's memoir does neither. His parents epitomise ordinariness as exemplified, almost metaphorically, by his father's occupation- a starch salesman. But it's that ordinariness which is the book's [...]

Taken in two parts, Richard Ford writes about his parents. The earlier half of the book, written last, is about his father and the latter part his mother. This book is atmospheric in the simple tone of a childhood era I share, partly, with the author. I felt enfolded into the narrative as it grew on me. I was left at the end of the book, glad I had read it and wishing for time to write of my own childhood and about my own parents.Powerful and personal, I am glad for the glimpse into this remarka [...]