How I Came Into My Inheritance: And Other True Stories

by Dorothy Gallagher

Book Overview

Dorothy Gallagher began her literary career fabricating sensational stories about celebrities for a pulp magazine whose other writers included Mario Puzo and Bruce Jay Friedman. Nothing she made up,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375503463
• ISBN13: 9780375503467
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Hungry for Justice & Life

Started it on the bus home at 10:30. Took time out to walk the dog. Didn't put it down until I finished it at nearly 4a.m. E-mailed my friends about it. Loaned it to my neighbor: now there's a waiting list for my copy. Every one here is fully alive, but their privacy is never betrayed. The swirl of the family life of large, committed characters, pulls the reader in, as if it were one's own. Their stories inform mine, but with tougher wit. The miserable uncle whom life always betrays until, widowed at the end, he gets a whole year of happiness with an ex-lover. The bossy aunt who runs everyone's life but, finally, does not have the courage to dump a featureless husband, chained to him in Art Deco Miami. The aunt & uncle who barely escape their return to a Russian worker's paradise. The author's own betrayal of her principles in order to avoid jail for having an abortion in the bad old days. Terry Southern, Mario Puzo & Bruce Jay Friedman have all written of their peonage at "True," but Ms. Gallagher fills in more of that story of creating reporting with no basis. These stories bring glamour to the lives of people who didn't have much, didn't get much & bothered the hell out of you, but had a large hunger for life & justice.

My Antonia as written by Flannery O'Connor

I loved this collection of stories. As much a family history as an autobiography. It might be titled "How I Came To Be The Way I Am And What's It To You?" Family members aren't treated as "eccentric" in the good old Southern style but presented with humor, compassion and not letting them get away with a thing. I highly recommend it.

a small gem

This brief memoir can easily be sandwiched into our busy lives, and what a reward it is for those who read it. It is a partly sad, partly funny, very engrossing story of the end of Ms Gallagher's parents' lives and the effect on her, which we come to understand gradually as she reveals more of her past. Her bizarre childhood is revealed with a light touch, and her unique perspective on the time period is fascinating. It will make you smile, it has a familiar ring to anyone dealing with aging and loss, and is both a good read and a comfort. What more could one ask for?

Parents and Politics in Perfect Prose

Dorothy Gallagher applies dry-eyed wit and candor not only to her fiercely difficult parents and their numerous associates but also to herself, which makes "How I Came Into My Inheritance" a lesson in revelation. What sets this book far above the usual memoir is the author's abiltity to tell a story, her instinct for the telling detail, the killing choice of a word. She knows how to write, and the reader cannot resist her. While she is exceptionally good (and funny!) at illustrating the politics that defined her childhood (she would have been surprised to learn that all children didn't go to socialist summer camp), Gallagher is mesmerizing when she writes about her parents aging. She captures the exquisite heartbreak and confusion both for child and parent, and she does it with no sentimentality whatsoever. In this age of the lazy, glossy-mag confessionals, Gallagher's book is a triumph of sophisticated observation and highly skilled prose. It will raise your standards for anecdote, memoir and family history.

An extraordinary memoir

This book is fiercely honest, reads like a hardboiled swoon, with dark, delicious, surprising humor throughout. The first chapter, which involves a hilarious bit of deathbed hustling on the part of the author, is a defiant shot that says: judge me, go ahead, I dare you. Born into an eccentric family of Russian immigrants, the author's earliest remembrances are seasoned with the tarnishing legacies of Trotsky, Stalin, Marx. How these ideas filter into a child's mind and then play out in her adult life is what makes the rest of the book so touching, and often, so funny. The chapter about her job inventing star gossip for tabloid mags is alone worth the cover price. Highly recommended.