The Memoir That Will Blow You Away (Plus 7 Other Powerful Picks)
Unexpected stories with heartache and
revelations so intense, the experiences can only be real.
By Leigh Newman
2 of 8
Leaving the Pink House
By Ladette Randolph
216 pages;
University Of Iowa Press
In this memoir, Ladette Randolph and her husband, Noel, sell their rustic-chic house in
Lincoln, Nebraska in order to move to a derelict farm in the country outside of
town. Since they've taken a bridge loan, the couple must complete the
renovation of the new house within nine months, and the story is organized
around the process of redoing roofs, and finding kitchen cabinets, as the clock
ticks down and contracting mishaps multiply. But it's a misleadingly
lighthearted structure, because, as Randolph redoes her new home, she looks
back on her many past ones, revealing powerful events with an understated
elegance that only makes them more powerful. These include: her survival from a
rare blood cancer in her 20s, her departure from the fundamental Christian
church in which she was raised and her horrific divorce during which her
5-year-old daughter was forced by a judge to choose between
parents—and could not. Leaving the Pink House
is one of those books that helps you realize the enormity of the so-called
average human experience. "This is the story of my life," writes
Randolph about the night she decides to leave her narcissistic husband during a
cancer treatment, but then is discouraged
by a nurse, "moments of crystalline perception followed by a sluggish
indecision and an eager willingness to talk myself out of my own best
interest." It's a feeling we've all had at least once in our lives. But
for this writer, in this memoir, that crystalline perception appears to have
returned to reside permanently on the page.
— Leigh Newman
Published 10/14/2014