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An American Childhood
An American Childhood
Author: Annie Dillard
A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant, vivid memoir of growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. — Annie Dillard remembers. She remembers the exhilaration of whipping a snowball at a car and having it hit straight on. She remem...  more »
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ISBN-13: 9780060915186
ISBN-10: 0060915188
Publication Date: 9/1/1988
Pages: 272
Rating:
  • Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
 65

3.7 stars, based on 65 ratings
Publisher: Perennial
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio Cassette
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed An American Childhood on + 27 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
Of Annie Dillard's books, I read An American Childhood first, and that was fortuitous, because later, when I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I felt like I had known Annie as a girl and was meeting her again. Annie Dillard the woman is a close, respectful and articulate observer of the world around her at her home on Tinker Creek, Virginia. Reading pilgrim Annie's book is an esthetic pleasure and a therapeutic one, too. There are many readers like the woman I met once at a baccalaureate at which the speaker had taken his 'text' from Dillard. The woman said......"It's time for me to read Annie Dillard again." I understand that perfectly.
reviewed An American Childhood on + 9 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
A wonderful book. Highly recommend it.
margaretlee avatar reviewed An American Childhood on + 171 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
Annie was my creative writing teacher in college and my mentor. I've read all of her books and this one ranks right at the top. Her observant way of capturing ordinary events in imaginative prose brings an 'aha' moment to lots of pages. In this book, I remember reading about her lying in bed and watching a 'ghost of light' sweep around the wall of her room. Only much later did she realize that it was the headlight of a car turning a corner. So much to love about Annie and the way she chronicles our days on this planet. Read her work. You'll be glad you did!
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renegade avatar reviewed An American Childhood on
From Publishers Weekly
Dillard's luminous prose painlessly captures the pain of growing up in this wonderful evocation of childhood. Her memoir is partly a hymn to Pittsburgh, where orange streetcars ran on Penn Avenue in 1953 when she was eight, and where the Pirates were always in the cellar. Dillard's mother, an unstoppable force, had energies too vast for the bridge games and household chores that stymied her. Her father made low-budget horror movies, loved Dixieland jazz, told endless jokes and sight-gags and took lonesome river trips down to New Orleans to get away. From this slightly odd couple, Dillard (Teaching a Stone to Talk acquired her love of nature and taut sensitivity. The events of childhood often loom larger than life; the magic of Dillard's writing is that she sets down typical childhood happenings with their original immediacy and force.


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