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Title: Family Bible
Author: Melissa J. Delbridge
Narrator: Melba Sibrel
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
Language: English
Release date: 10-19-12
Publisher: University Press Audiobooks
Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 3 votes
Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs
Publisher's Summary:
"Swimming and sex seemed a lot alike to me when I was growing up. You took off most of your clothes to do them and you only did them with people who were the same color as you. As your daddy got richer, you got to do them in fancier places." Starting with her father, who never met a whitetail buck he couldn't shoot, a whiskey bottle he couldn't empty, or a woman he couldn't charm, and her mother, who "invented road rage before 1960," Melissa Delbridge introduces us to the people in her own family bible. Readers will find elements of Southern Gothic and familiar vernacular characters, but Delbridge endows each with her startling and original interpretation. In this disarmingly unguarded and unapologetic memoir, she shows us what really happened in the "stew of religion and sex" that was 1960s Tuscaloosa.
Critic Reviews:
"Delbridge knows sorrow like she knows the rhythm of her own heart. . . . Fans of Carson McCullers won't want to miss this one-witty, tragic, and relentlessly wise." (Booklist)
"Melissa Delbridge's memories of her early life are dead-accurate, hilarious, and tragic and will surely prove enduring as a guide to the Deepest South-a place and a culture that continue to prove alarmingly vital. I mean to keep the book handy, for pleasure and real guidance." (Reynolds Price)
Members Reviews:
A clear-eyed view of growing up Southern
In this memoir, Melissa Delbridge tells her particular story of growing up not-rich in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in the 1960s. The South at that time (heck, maybe at all times) was a slow-boiling mess of religion and sex mixed with racism and garden-variety corruption.
So often, families managed to look âniceâ on the surface, but carried some debilitating cancers inside. Good appearances covered (and still do) complex nests of tragedy and abuse of all kinds. But the Southern mind tries desperately to somehow make comedy of all this, and, surprisingly often, manages it.
Itâs hard to explain to someone who hasnât experienced it, the difficulty of steering your own life between the stern tides of expected religion, the wallowing currents of social hypocrisy, and everyoneâs underlying riptide of pure humanity, with its treacherous streams of love, hate, fear, sex, wonder, disgust, joy and loneliness.
Disclaimer: One of the reasons I so enjoyed (although that might not be exactly the right word) this memoir is that Delbridgeâs young world so resembled mine. Not exactly, obviously, but with so many similarities. I wonder if Iâd be as brave as she has been, to tell such truths.
I highly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in the Southern or female realities of 50 years ago. You might be surprised - or maybe not - to find that some of them havenât changed as much as you might think.
highly recommend
I cried, I laughed, I smiled, I cried some more. Melissa tells her tale with grace, humor, and remarkable candor. She spares neither herself nor her family, and some of the stories made my heart ache for her. But in the end, itâs impossible for the reader to hate anyone in Melissaâs life, regardless of how they treated her. She herself has long since forgiven all of them--and she expects nothing less from her readers.
Her prose is exquisite; her descriptions, magical; and her compassion, palpable. Well done, Melissa Delbridge.
