Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life

By Abigail Thomas

Book Overview

A beautifully crafted and inviting account of one woman's life, Safekeeping offers a sublimely different kind of autobiography. Setting aside a straightforward narrative in favor of brief passages of vivid prose, Abigail Thomas revisits the pivotal moments and the tiny incidents that have shaped her life: pregnancy at 18; single motherhood (of three ) by the age of 26; the joys and frustrations of three marriages; and the death of her second husband, who was her best friend. The stories made of these incidents are startling in their clarity and reassuring in their wisdom. This is a book in which silence speaks as eloquently as what is revealed. Openhearted and effortlessly funny, these brilliantly selected glimpses of the arc of a life are, in an age of excessive confession and recrimination, a welcome tonic.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385720556
• ISBN13: 9780385720557
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

OLDER, WISER, AND A TREASURE FOR ALL

Reading Safekeeping: Some True Stories From A Life, a memoir by Abigail Thomas, is much like being in conversation with a trusted friend - defenses aren't necessary, smiles abound, tears flow unashamedly. The author, who established her literary mettle with three previous novels, most memorable for me, Herb's Pajamas (1998), writes close to the bone and straight from the heart as she reveals her life in a series of affecting...

Read it and

weep and laugh and most of all feel all the emotions life holds...Thomas writes______"this is not what I expected. I expected pure joy, and here are joy and sorrow mixing into the same moment." Doesn't that express so often how we feel, this book is filled with so many moments that I identified with...how can you not love a woman who writes ..the truth was she didn't keep the can opener anywhere. The can opener was wherever...

Thomas is a great writer

I first read Abigail Thomas' work several years ago in the literary journal, "Glimmer Train." I never forgot those stories: smart, funny, real, brilliant. And her new book held up to that standard. I read it in one day. I just couldn't put it down. It was like a box of chocolates--I kept thinking, okay just one more...each "chapter" is very short, each packed with intelligence, grace, love. This is a great book.

Another brilliant book by Abigail Thomas

After reading Getting Over Tom, An Actual Life, and Herb's Pajamas, I was thrilled to get Abigail Thomas's new book. This book is brilliantly written, revealing emotions that I before now didn't think could be expressed through written material. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has read anything by Ms. Thomas before, and to those who have not yet been introduced to this author's wonderful writing style. The...

Set aside a day

to read this honest, large-hearted, memoir, told in a series of short (often only a paragraph, sometimes a page) vignettes. You won't regret it. Thomas reveals a life lived fully, with all senses engaged, smell, taste, touch, in these pieces about her first marriage when she was a pregnant teenager, to a second with a much older physicist ("Dance for me while the chicken is cooking," he says to her) whom she divorces...