| Making Toast |  | Author: Roger Rosenblatt
Publisher: Ecco
Category: Book
List Price: $21.99
Buy New: $9.59
as of 9/10/2010 07:44 CDT details
You Save: $12.40 (56%)
New (37) Used (16) Collectible (3) from $9.59
Seller: BRILANTI BOOKS
Rating:  81 reviews
Sales Rank: 24,774
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1St Edition
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 006182593X
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.8745092
EAN: 9780061825934
Publication Date: March 1, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780061825934 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
"How long are you staying, Boppo?" "Forever." When his daughter, Amy—a gifted doctor, mother, and wife—collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies. Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny—Boppo and Mimi to the kids—quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, playdates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought. Though reeling from Amy's death they carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tender-hearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marvels at the strength of his son-in-law, a surgeon, and the tenacity and skill of his wife, a former kindergarten teacher, Roger attends each day to "the one household duty I have mastered"—preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking. With the wit, heart, precision, and depth of understanding that has characterized his work, Roger Rosenblatt peels back the layers on this most personal of losses to create both a tribute to his late daughter and a testament to familial love. The day Amy died, Harris told Ginny and Roger, "It's impossible." Roger's story tells how a family makes the possible of the impossible.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 81
 Life is not fair, but it's still good. August 31, 2010
Mame
As the mother of a recently widowed daughter with two young children of her own and three teenaged boys for whom she is guardian, Roger Rosenblatt's Making Toast spoke volumns in one small, beautifully presented book.
We will all make it through these tough times with the help of friends, family, faith, and chilled white wine. The innocence and sweetness of children helps too.
A wordsmith's engagement with loss August 31, 2010
Anam Cara (Michigan)
I have not read any of Roger Rosenblatt's other works but this one intrigues me. The occasion for this book is the unexpected death of Rosenblatt's daughter Amy.
This chapterless book reveals vignettes of loss-moments embedded in the ordinary life of raising grandchildren. Like grief, it is not a narrative. It is however, Robert-Fulghum-variety ordinary meeting poignant moments of mortal honesty. There is a unique emotional intermittency in this bound collection of seemingly disconnected paragraphal reflections. Like loss, one emotion doesn't have staying power but multiple emotions remain simultaneously.
A book like this leaves the reader impressed by the author's descriptive vocabulary, uncertain because of the feeling of voyeurism in the intimate loss in this family, annoyed at the endless mention of celebrities, and frustrated because of Rosenblatt's approach of sporatically lowering the drawbridge into his life and then quickly raising it again lest we get too close.
It seems to me that this is a book written by a man who is understandably well-fortified, but whose heart is on the verge of fully breaking. I think Rosenblatt tries to manage the experience of grief with words; but my sense is that grief cannot be managed - it manages us.
I felt the closest to this author when near the end (pg 156), he describes life as a marathon and something that must be endured. This felt like a moment of breakthrough; I am not sure if it was me to him or him to me.
 Self-indulgent August 17, 2010
Lee Ann (Pennsylvania)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This simply did not move me. Yes, it's devastating to lose a child. That doesn't mean there's a book in it.
Making Toast is not a sustained narrative. It's a book of bits and pieces, snippets of episodes. I didn't find it informative or involving enough for someone who didn't know (or know about) the author. However, clearly I would get some disagreement about that: I read this because someone recommended it to me, and it has many favorable reviews.
To me, the book has an annoying quality to it. Rosenblatt takes pains to let the reader know just how privileged his and his daughter Amy's family is. While the book doesn't read as actual bragging, it is tasteless enough to parade fame, fortune, and accomplishment around with a fairly blasé air, as if Rosenblatt is quite impressed with himself but knows it would be in bad taste to be overt about it. The house in Quogue. The nanny. The children's therapist. The famous people he knows. And so on. If I hadn't been stuck somewhere for a few hours with nothing else to do, I would not have bothered finishing the book.
The author has been in publishing for a long time, and perhaps it was a natural response to write out his grief. But then he should have put the pages in a drawer somewhere for a few years, maybe later circulating copies to his family members. It certainly did not connect with me.
A Touching Tribute from Father to Daughter July 29, 2010
E.R.G. (League City, TX USA)
In Roger Rosenblatt's touching book, Making Toast, we get an insider view to the aftermath of an event no parent ever hopes to experience: the death of a child.
Seasoned journalist Rosenblatt's daughter, Amy, died of a rare condition--an anomalous right coronary artery. Normally the heart's two main arteries are found one on each side, and if one stops working the other can do the work for both; in Amy's case they both ran alongside each other. The doctors in the situation said she could have died at any time, but Amy had a chance to live a fairly full life--she was 38 at the time of her death on Dec. 8, 2007, a pediatrician, wife of a prominent hand surgeon, and mother to three young children.
Immediately after Amy's death Rosenblatt and his wife, Ginny, move in to help Amy's husband, Harrison, take care of the kids. Rosenblatt describes the paradox of the situation: the jarring reality that has become the family's new life and the normality that quickly follows the horror of death. From his writing style we get a very real sense of how he must spend most of his time, splitting it between thinking about his precious baby girl's childhood and adulthood and also trying to balance the demands of three grandchildren.
Throughout the book Rosenblatt alternates between scenes from Amy's childhood and early adulthood, memories of the days immediately following her death, and his daily adventures in taking care of the grandkids. These adventures go from the mundane--being the special guest in his granddaughter's classroom--to the heartbreaking--the children having an emotional scare when Ginny chokes during a meal. It is at moments like these when the effect of Amy's death on the children is most evident, and no one can do anything except help the children understand that everything actually will be okay. No one will die this time.
Rosenblatt clearly appreciates the opportunity to be with the children, but he hates the method by which this opportunity has come. His recollections are by turns loving and slightly befuddled at what to do with the children, emotions that all parents can relate to. The difference is that Rosenblatt is getting the chance to live these experiences a second time around. A saving grace for him is that he can see glimmers of Amy in the kids, and so through them he can hold on to Amy in the only way a parent can when he loses a child.
The book is a short one at first glance--the hardback comes in at a mere 166 pages. Parts of the book first appeared in serialized form in The New Yorker, and the full version follows a magazine-style format. For that reason the entries aren't necessarily chronological, and that choice of style coupled with the gravity of the subject matter could require a second or third perusal before readers fully grasp what Rosenblatt is saying. But he starts and ends with a positive note, and his book could be a comfort to other parents or even grandparents living in his situation. Making Toast is a must read.
"I wake up earlier than the others, usually around 5am to perform the one household duty I have mastered. I prepare toast." July 13, 2010
LoriDee (New York USA)
A brilliant little novel with insight, humor and a stirring tribute to the author's daughter who died unexpectedly in 2007. Rosenblatt has the ability to make the reader marvel in the mundane. We get to know not only the author but his daughter as he and his wife move in to help the bereaved husband and children of Amy. Everyday as they live her life, taking the kids to school, market, friends houses, classes and lessons Roger and Ginny get to hear and remember the impact their daughter had on so many lives. Never self indulgent or sad, this book is uplifting in the face of grief and honest in it's assessment of life without a loved one. Written in a diary like style, it focuses on the day to day without a loved one and the unexpected joys and sorrows that brings over a two year time. Wonderful!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 81
|
|
|
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.
The easiest way to build a complete Amazon Affiliate Store.
| |
