Review
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“With restrained prose and charming humor, [Smith] illuminated a
way of life that has all but disappeared and explores the impulse
to bear witness that underpins the storyteller in all of us.”
—People (Book of the Week)
“Smith delivers a memoir that shines with a bright spirit, a
generous heart and an entertaining knack for celebrating
absurdity. Although DIMESTORE is constructed as a series of
personal essays, it presents as full a sense of a life as any
traditional narrative.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“…heartwarming… Dimestore shares the habits that may have saved
Smith from her own tendency to get too “wrought up,” one of which
was to approach storytelling “the way other people write in their
journals,” in order to make it through the night. Fiction became
her lifelong outlet, a means of sustaining and reaffirming the
connection to her work, as well as a way to preserve the rich
ain culture she so loved as a child.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Dimestore may prove to be a work that connects wildly with
readers. Because truth is often more powerful than fiction, and
because the tale she has actually lived so far to tell is
rendered keenly, irrepressibly and without self-pity. Lee Smith,
the person, emerges as one of nonfiction’s great protagonists.”
—Raleigh News & Observer
“Now, at last, we have Dimestore: A Writer’s Life, a seasoned,
open-hearted memoir, taking us from her youth in the coal-mining
town of Grundy, Va., through her education at private schools in
Richmond and Roanoke, Va., to her life since 1974, first in
Chapel Hill married to the poet James Seay, and since 1985, to
columnist and literary critic Hal Crowther. Throughout, the
memoir shows Smith’s spunk and spirit…. Yes, Lee Smith is a
writer, and without that, we probably would not have this
engrossing memoir. But at heart, Lee Smith is a woman –
openhearted, spirited, humble – and it is those qualities
especially that inspire and make us glad as we read.”
—Charlotte Observer
“…profoundly readable… Like her novels, Smith’s memoir is
, as though writer and reader are sitting together on a
front-porch swing. She writes in the rich vernacular of her
youth. Smith’s details are so piercingly remembered, so vividly
set on the page, that I felt wrapped in a great blanket of
familiarity. Her memoir is a warm, poignant read about a lost
time and place, a love of books and a celebration of the quirks
and oddities of home.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“This memoir is Smith at her finest. There is not one false note
in the book. This wonderful memoir—filled with tenderness,
compassion, love, and humor—is highly recommended for fans of
Smith’s fiction, lovers of Southern writing, and readers who are
interested in the changes in small-town America.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Candid and unsentimental, Smith's book sheds light on her
beginnings as writer while revealing her resilience and personal
transformations over the course of a remarkable lifetime. A warm,
poignant memoir from a reliably smooth voice.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Dimestore…is a testament to the power of place. The author of
thirteen novels and multiple short story collections, Smith has
long brought Appalachia to life for readers, and the book
chronicles her own childhood in the coal-mining town of Grundy,
Virginia, where she worked as a young girl in her her’s
five-and dime, and her path to becoming a writer.”
—Garden &
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About the Author
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Born in the small coal-mining town of Grundy, Virginia, Lee Smith
began writing stories at the age of nine and selling them for a
nickel apiece. Since then, she has written seventeen works of
fiction, including Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, and,
most recently, Guests on Earth. She has received many awards,
including the North Carolina Award for Literature and an Academy
Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters;
her novel The Last Girls was a New York Times bestseller as well
as winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in
Hillsborough, North Carolina, with her husband, the writer Hal
Crowther. Visit her at www.leesmith.com.
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