Kvetch- One Bitch Of A Life

BOOK TITLE: Kvetch - One Bitch of a Life

ISBN: -

AUTHOR: Greta Beigel

GENRE: Non-fiction, memoir

NUMBER OF PAGES: 120

FORMAT: Digital

SERIES / STANDALONE: Standalone

REVIEW BY: Dhivya Balaji

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/20539669-dhivya-balaji

HOW I GOT THIS BOOK: The author sent us a review copy after reading our interview, published previously.

REVIEW:

          Kvetch – One bitch of a life is a memoir of the author, Greta Beigel. Knowing very little about and having absolutely no experience about memoirs, I took this book up to respond to the author’s review request. But maybe because this book is my first of this kind, or maybe this book does not fall under the category I am a fan of, I found this book only mildly interesting. But one thing to be said as a fair measure: The book is a really riveting memoir.

          Greta starts describing her early life and her passion with playing the piano. She talks about how she didn’t have a family man for a dad. She is left to live (along with her siblings) with a mother who supports her music passion with almost manic intensity. But Greta loves the piano and is able to sidle with her mother’s wish to make her a great pianist. But her mother makes her do, what she can never have done in her youth. But as Greta grows up with the influence of a few people, she remembers a prophetic word of a neighbour, something that lives with her forever, "Remember Greta," she (the neighbour) says without provocation,” it's better to have been a has-been, than a never wasser."

          The author recalls in vivid details, her first recital in a recording room, her passion with Elvis who stormed the music scene in the 1950s, and her wish to go to America. Her descriptions of apartheid are brilliantly accurate and bring the scene to life. The book is filled with equal measures of aims, aspirations, agony.

         

          We are also given an insight into the author’s wishes to get her name in print, all the while trying to abide by her mother’s wishes and trying to ‘get a man’. The recollections are laced with humour and a trace of sarcasm, sometimes directed towards the mother.

          This book has it all, inexperienced trysts with men, failed marriage, lost recitals, even a cosmetic surgery thrown in. The author’s experiences in America are laced with good times and a few laughs and happy sighs. The roller coaster ride across three countries travels back and forth in time frames too.

          The various twists and turns in the life leave you with an almost sceptic wonder, if so much could happen to a single woman. But it has happened and it has been documented. The best that can be said for this book and its first and foremost quality is, it is honest. Not self trumpeting or glossing out details.

          But sometimes, one cannot help but feel confused as the author switches between what we would call ‘mind-voice’ and explanatory. And the second confusion arises when the author keeps going back and forth between countries and the past, and present, with harrowing and humorous experiences mixed together in a sweet-sour cocktail.

          Find out how the little girl from Johannesburg went from being a pianist to a journalist for LA times. Read this memoir to have a inside account of Greta as she recounts her experiences, not day by day, year by year, rather like post-it notes that track every idea just as you remember it. This book is a beautiful collection of post-it notes and the author is recounting the experiences as much for her as for the reader.

WHAT I LIKED: Honest, open narrative.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER: Geographical, time space switch, and a little distortion in language.

VERDICT: Go for it if memoirs are your cup of tea!

RATING: 3.8/5

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A child piano prodigy, Greta Beigel was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household in Johannesburg. She earned a Performers' Licenciate Diploma in Music from the University of South Africa and was awarded an overseas scholarship. She studied with Aube Tzerko in Los Angeles, and there, reunited with her long-lost Yiddishe father. She went on to become an arts reporter and editor specializing in classical music coverage. Greta is the author of three Jewish-themed titles: "Mewsings: My Life as Jewish Cat," (also an audio CD on itunes); "A Jew from Riga," a short story about her visit to Latvia in order to trace her father's mysterious past, and her latest, "Kvetch: One Bitch of a Life," a memoir about growing up Jewish and a gifted pianist in Africa during apartheid.

EDITIONS AVAILABLE: digital

PRICE: Rs 439 for kindle edition

BOOK LINKS: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GFI5MO