Dark comic microbursts of prose deliver a whole childhood, at the hands of an aspiring middle-class Jewish family whose hard-boiled American values and wit were the forge of a poet's coming-of-age.
A vibrant, moving portrait ... Each piece stands alone and often has the rhythm of a joke, the kind of joke Hirsch excels at—funny, sad, ironic all at once ... Other sections read like verse without the line breaks, beautiful, rhythmic reminders that a poet is at the mic ... A hilarious, poignant memoir by a wonderful, generous writer. The first half is so vivid and original, so bursting with life and unforgettable people, that a downshift was almost inevitable ... The book sustains its humor, clarity and smarts, as well as the integrity of its form, though now the titled pieces feel less like metal for the smelter and more like houses in a Midwestern Levittown.
Each chapter is devoid of sentiment yet concentrated with life ... The triumph of My Childhood in Pieces is that it is able to capture a specific Jewish American experience not only in content but also in form ... Commemorates a family’s survival with the same tough love used to survive it.
Renowned poet Hirsch recounts his rough-and-tumble Chicago and Skokie childhood in ingeniously distilled comedic bits. Some are as concise as a sentence; others set a scene and include dialogue, usually in the form of insults or threats. Pithy, lacerating, bittersweet, and hilarious ... This card-slapping, dice-rolling, nimbly riffing, heart-wrenching remembrance is glorious in its pain and love, humor and wonder.
