Book Giveaway – Fiction Writer Turns to Memoir: Alice Hoffman’s Survival Lessons Reviewed by Lanie Tankard

Post #102 – Women’s Memoirs, Book & Video Raves – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

Survival Lessons

by Alice Hoffman

[We hope you enjoy this review. Please leave a comment below and you will automatically be entered in the contest to receive a free copy of Alice Hoffman’s memoir.]

Reviewed by Lanie Tankard

Author Alice Hoffman’s life is steeped in words. Normally she inhabits fiction as evidenced by the twenty-three adult novels and eight young adult novels she’s written. Her words have also taken her to Hollywood with five films.

So it came naturally to Hoffman fifteen years ago, when she faced a diagnosis of breast cancer, to search for support through words. What she desired was a handbook on how to proceed, but never found one. Recently she recalled her fruitless quest, and decided to create that guide for others.

Thus arose her first nonfiction foray, culminating in Survival Lessons. It’s a slim little volume, only eighty-three pages, in some ways too short. Yet it’s easy to tuck in a purse or tote bag to peruse in a medical waiting room, or simply to hold as a talisman. Sometimes that’s all one needs.

Hoffman has generated minimalistic memoir musings in the form of a compendium for anyone facing a tough time, but particularly those confronting a diagnosis of breast cancer. And Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October) was the perfect publication period.

Survival Lessons is a mashup of unpredictable memories—some about family and some about wildly unrelated topics: her Russian grandmother, recipes, her mother’s broken marriage, inspirational poetry quotes, knitting patterns, bon mots, friends (those who are there for you and those who aren’t, and the new ones you make along the way), photographs, the value of puppies (as well as chocolate) during times of trial, and concrete suggestions such as “Buy a pair of kick-ass boots.” Hoffman poses all her selections in twenty chapters categorized as various types of choices.

Family and friends who want to help but don’t know what to do can pick up tips in this collection. Listen to one who has been there. She has sage advice on how, simply, to be with someone. Hoffman took inexplicable things and mixed them with a practical understanding of life, much as she does in her novels with magic realism. The manual reads like a hug, an arm around the shoulders saying, “Hey, you can do it. Hang in there.”

Hoffman and her family helped create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mount Auburn Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, by donating the advance from her book Local Girls. She has noted that she wrote her way through cancer treatment, resulting in a book titled The River King. She termed writing “a life raft” and reading “a lifesaver” during that period.

One can glean awareness of Hoffman’s development as a writer through this latest book. In Survival Lessons, she discusses influences such as her professor, Albert J. Guerard, and his wife, short-story writer Maclin Bocock Guerard. You’ll find out why she likens knitting to writing, and how books can get you through bone scans.

Alice Hoffman is a wonderful storyteller, and this time the story she’s telling is her own.

Lanie Tankard is a freelance writer and editor in Austin, Texas. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and former production editor of “Contemporary Psychology: A Journal of Reviews,” she has also been an editorial writer for the “Florida Times-Union” in Jacksonville.

[Be sure to leave a comment below. You will automatically be entered in the contest to receive a free copy of Alice Hoffman’s memoir. We will contact the winner for your address.]

Tagged as: Alice Hoffman memoir, Book Review, memoir review