‘Kaboom’ fizzles in bath of tepid juvenilia
Gregg Araki puts the “terrible” in enfant terrible.
For more than 20 years, the filmmaker has staked his dubious claim as the foremost auteur of vacuous Gen-X movies about sexually experimental hipsters. With one notable exception – the disturbing and deeply moving Mysterious Skin, which boasted the best performance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s career -- his movies are stultifying glimpses into a void of hedonism and eye-rolling self-referentiality, as artistically malignant as they are intellectually deflated.
Araki’s latest, Kaboom, is essentially a science-fiction movie, albeit a subversive one that deserves some credit for wandering way off the genre’s reservation. Unfortunately, the places it wanders off to resemble the hollow vacuum of juvenilia that is home to just about every other Araki film.
The film showcases the 52-year-old writer-director at his infantile worst. His fans may hold him in a higher regard than such low-hanging directorial fruit as Kevin Smith and Dennis Dugan, but his movies are just puerile. How’s this for a priceless line of Araki dialogue, from one of his sexually liberated female characters: “If I come anymore tonight, my cooch is gonna break off.”
When he isn’t trying to shock us with his characters’ sexual frankness, Araki bombards us with pop-culture snark and litmus-test references to his favorite music and movies, from New Order to Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou. “Are you worried?” asks protagonist Smith (Thomas Dekker) to his best friend Stella (Haley Bennett) following some strange occurrences on the college campus they share. “Does Mel Gibson hate Jews?” she replies, without missing a beat.
Araki’s cinematic fantasylands are populated exclusively by cultured, quick-witted horndogs just like these two contrived specimens, their lines dripping with their screenwriter’s self-satisfaction. Others include Juno Temple as a randy British tart with an ’80s coif and a library of Buzzcocks references, James Duval as a hippie prophet of doom and Chris Zylka as a perpetually shirtless surfer-hunk named Thor who tries to master the art of self-fellatio.
A realistic conversation between these creatures is about as rare as an intriguing shot. For Araki, the cinematography is all about a motley, eye-catching set design and a multicolored mise-en-scène that tries, unsuccessfully, to mask the director’s pedestrian eye.
Kaboom’s ramshackle plot follows around Smith and Stella as they attempt to fornicate their way through one mysterious phenomeon after another, from the real-life manifestations of recurring dreams to strangers in animal masks slaying women in the dead of night to a devious new mate who harbor powers of supernatural possession and witchcraft. It is at once a near-pornographic, bisexual college comedy, a slasher film and a paranoid political thriller, all mashed together into a scuzzy ball and spat onto the screen. Some of it is arousing, some of it mildly interesting, but most of the time, you’ll just feel icky and impatient.
By the time the picture ends, on a surprisingly fun note of anarchic, existential lunacy that is too late in justifying its characters’ artificiality, you won’t care about the results. More likely, you’ll wonder why people keep letting Araki make movies.
KABOOM. Director: Gregg Araki; Cast: Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, James Duval, Andy Fisher-Price, Jason Olive, Juno Temple, Chris Zylka; Distributor: IFC Films; Rating: R. Now playing at Living Room Theaters at FAU in Boca Raton, Frank Gateway 4 in Fort Lauderdale and Coral Gables Art Cinema in Coral Gables.
Film festivals cover varied ground, from indie to Andy
Palm Beach County used to be film-festival challenged, but now we have a glut of options for moviegoers who want to get away from a steady diet of studio fare and perhaps rub shoulders with some of the filmmakers. It is, after all, not a hard sell to get directors and actors to come to Palm Beach in the final, frozen days of winter.
Tonight kicks off the 16th annual Palm Beach International Film Festival, which each year lately threatens to be its last as corporate sponsorships get tighter in this economy and the festival no longer has the political muscle it once enjoyed.
Still, it opens with a solid winner, Tom McCarthy’s Win Win, the assured saga of a hapless New Jersey lawyer (the great Paul Giamatti) who pulls an unethical move on an aging, growing senile client (Burt Young) and risks losing his practice. Nevertheless, his luck improves as the client’s grandson from Ohio comes to visit and he happens to be a wrestling whiz, who joins the high school squad that Giamatti coaches and breaks them out of their losing streak. Factor in terrific support from Amy Ryan, and you have a smart film with complex characters worth rooting for.
Young will be present at the screening tonight at the Muvico at CityPlace and if you miss Win Win tonight, it will likely be repeated in the final days of the nine-day fest, when the most popular entries are rerun.
Festival organizers are justifiably proud that they have amassed 11 world premieres, 3 U.S. premieres and 14 Florida premieres, with films from such countries as the Netherlands, Italy, France, England, Russia, Israel, Australia, Liberia, the Czech Republic, Canada and Greece.
Attendance over the years has been erratic, but if independent and foreign films are your passion, this is probably your best local chance to see a wde variety of them on the big screen. For the schedule, go to www.pbfilmfest.org.
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A decidedly more offbeat and smaller event is the African-American Film Festival, a series of three movies focusing on the history of black cinema, showing at the Kravis Center for the sixth straight year.
Producer James Drayton usually emphasizes films of social and cultural significance, but this year’s attention-getting theme is “Movies We Might Rather Forget.”
For three Tuesday evenings, beginning March 29, attendees can see three incredibly politically incorrect selections from the days of unabashed racial stereotyping. The festival kicks off with an evening of episodes from the notorious Amos and Andy Show, which is so rarely shown these days. Similarly, it will be followed by 1945’s Open the Door, Richard, a starring vehicle for Stepin Fetchit, the comic actor whose very stage name is synonymous with “slowness and laziness and stupidity,” notes Drayton.
The third show of the festival is also from 1945, Brewster’s Millions, the fable of a guy who can inherit a large fortune if he can spend a small fortune in a limited amount of time. If that sounds familiar, it is probably because of the 1985 remake starring Richard Pryor. But the one in the African-American Film Festival features Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, not in the leading role, but as the wealthy spendthrift’s servant sidekick.
“These are all films that have a cloud over them,” says Drayton, a former area bookstore owner. “I think this is a marvelous opportunity to really look at this and learn something.”
Perhaps. Expect a lively, heated discussion following each screening, hosted by AnEta Sewell, Emmy Award-winning former area newscaster, currently seen on the CW/My TV Network weekly public affairs program Around Our Town.
For more information and for tickets, go to www.kravis.org.
Next: The first ever Palm Beach Women’s International Film Festival.
Music roundup: Orchestras stand out in Shostakovich, Mendelssohn
Boca Raton Symphonia (Sunday, March 20, Roberts Theater, Boca Raton)
The Boca Raton Symphonia closed its most recent concert Sunday with one of its better recent performances, one that seemed well-suited to the orchestra’s current period of experimentation and expansion.
Philippe Entremont, in his first year as conductor of the group, also appeared as piano soloist in the Beethoven Triple Concerto and led an instrumental excerpt from a Richard Strauss opera. But it was the closing work, Rudolf Barshai’s chamber orchestra arrangement of the Third String Quartet of Shostakovich, that had the sharpest profile.
One of several Shostakovich orchestrations under the title of Chamber Symphony (this one is in F, Op. 73a) that Barshai created, this reworking of the Third Quartet is faithful to the spirit of the original in that it has the same sense of impishness and wit, but Barshai adds a special dark coloring to the music by using his winds in lower registers early on.
Those same winds are used relatively sparingly to underline the music, which even here is still basically a work for strings. Ensemble was good overall, with logical tempi and a strong sense of unity of purpose. There was fine solo work throughout as well, from violist Michael Klotz, flutist Jeanne Tarrant, cellist Jason Callaway, oboist Erika Yamada and violinist Misha Vitenson.
Entremont kept a firm hand on the work’s narrative arc, moving from the pizzicato smirk at the end of the first movement to a heavy drive for the three-note motif that starts the second movement with no letup in energy or a long pause. In general, this was not a performance that indulged in any longueurs, even with the Beethoven-style figure that opens the fourth-movement Adagio, which moved along in a business-like manner into a sound world that was moody but not inert.
There was some gratifying attention to super-soft dynamics at the outset of the fifth-movement finale, and the transition to the sunnier, klezmer-tinged main theme of the movement was akin to a long-awaited break in the clouds. This was a somewhat demanding, difficult work with which to end the concert, but it was played with impressive skill, and like much of Shostakovich’s best music, it has that mix of bruised tonality and seriousness of purpose that seem so emblematic of 20th-century witness.
Sunday’s concert at the Roberts Theater on the campus of St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton opened with a chamber orchestra version of the opening string sextet from Richard Strauss’ 1942 opera, Capriccio. This is music of Strauss’ late manner, warm and slow-moving despite the occasional note-blizzard viola solo and a tempestuous contrasting section, and the Symphonia’s strings brought creaminess and confidence to it.
Ensemble at some points in the initial going was not precise, and the same was true at times in the final pages, but it didn’t detract much from the basic effect, which was sweet and highly emotive, or the high level of accomplishment the group demonstrated in playing it.
Violinist Ludwig Mueller and cellist Christophe Pantillon joined Entremont for the Beethoven Triple Concerto (in C, Op. 56) that ended the first half. For the most part, this also was a good performance of an unfairly neglected work, and it made a forceful impression on the audience.
Both Mueller and Pantillon proved to be expert players, but they both had some intonation problems, particularly in Pantillon’s high-register entrance with the theme in the Polish rondo finale, and more importantly there was something of a lack of cohesion between the three soloists. I think most of this had to do with the hall; Entremont’s piano (which he played winningly) faced in, away from the soloists, as it usually does when the pianist serves as conductor and soloist.
But the piano sounded distant and foggy from the audience, its notes swallowed up by the concrete, and it rarely sounded like a partner with the other two. With acoustics like those of the Roberts, it might have been better to set up the three men piano-trio style and have someone else conduct. The way it was, it was difficult to hear the juxtaposition of the three against the orchestra.
Yet there was still plenty of good music to be heard, and this was essentially a fine reading of one of the more interesting concertos in the repertoire, particularly in the finale, which had an engaging sense of high spirits and dazzle toward the close.
The Boca Symphonia’s next performances are set for 8 p.m. Saturday, April 9, and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 10, at the Roberts Theater. Conductor David Commanday will lead pianist Soyeon Lee in the Piano Concerto No. 23 (in A, K. 488) of Mozart, on a program that also includes the Italian Symphony (No. 4 in A, Op. 90) of Mendelssohn and Aaron Copland’s Music for Movies. Call 376-3848 or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.
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Palm Beach Symphony (Thursday, March 17, Palm Beach Atlantic University)
Assisted by a generous acoustic, conductor Ramon Tebar led his Palm Beach Symphony in an exciting evening of interpretive muscularity Thursday in the fourth concert of the orchestra’s current season.
Tebar, a 32-year-old Spaniard who was recently named music director of Miami’s Florida Grand Opera, is an energetic, passionate young conductor who shepherds his vocal and instrumental flocks through performances of great vitality. He is always thoroughly engaged in the music he’s making, and he brings a nice spark of star power to each of his podium appearances.
Thursday’s concert in the DeSantis Chapel on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic University was most enjoyable, not least because the acoustics of the chapel help round out and fill out the sound of the orchestra. It sounds like a much bigger band because of it, and you could hear the players growing more confident as the concert went on. (After all, that’s literally what good feedback will do for you.)
There were two important symphonies in D major (and minor) on the program, both from early in the respective composers’ careers: Haydn’s No. 6 (called Le Matin), and Mendelssohn’s No. 5 (Reformation, Op. 107), which is actually a much earlier work than its chronological or opus numbers would indicate.
The Haydn symphony was written in keeping with a concertante format that allowed the composer to show off the capabilities of his individual players, especially in the second movement, with its extensive work for solo violin and cello. But there are prominent solo wind moments in the other movements, which adds to the fresh, springy color of the music, helped along here by Tebar’s vigorous tempi.
The first movement had a lovely sense of lift and energy right from the first flute entrance, and the orchestra played all the rapid movements like a young man’s symphony, with exuberance and forward motion. Violinist Laura Miller and cellist Christopher Glansdorp tackled their solo work admirably, and in the same spirit; Miller was slightly under pitch some of the time, but she had a good rustic touch to her initial statement, as if summoning the village band to order.
In the minor-key trio section of the third movement, which features bassoon and double bass, bassoonist Michael Ellert played deftly above a bass dance figure that sounded like a thunderous rumble in the chapel, giving the music a heavier dose of contrast than Haydn intended. In the finale, Tebar chose a headlong tempo that evoked the wide-open fields outside instead of the indoors ritual of Esterhaza, and the effect was invigorating.
The Stravinsky Danses Concertantes that came next was welcome not just for its rarity on local concert programming but for its excellence as a pairing with the Haydn symphony. Written (in 1941-2) in the neoclassic style of the Symphony in C, the Dumbarton Oaks concerto and Jeu de Cartes, it is filled with the wind solo work that was such an integral part of the composer’s contemporary style.
It also shares the Haydn’s sense of fun and innovation, with its unexpected accents, surprising instrumental combinations and overall feeling of good spirits. Tebar and his players paid scrupulous attention to dynamics as well as getting the offbeat accents right, and that helped throw the contour of the work into high relief.
This was a meaty, sometimes boisterous reading of the Stravinsky work, with sharp playing all around, especially from the winds, who have to carry much of the musical argument in the later movements. It’s a pity this work isn’t heard more often in area concerts; it fit this program beautifully.
The concert closed with the Mendelssohn Fifth, which is not as effective a work as the later Scotch or Italian symphonies, but Tebar and the Palm Beachers gave it as persuasive a performance as I’ve heard in some time. The first movement was fraught with tension, and the second bubbled along at a good clip, and some pretty string sound in the contrasting section when violas and celli took up the main theme.
The third movement was smoothly played, and in the finale, Tebar went for bigness. Boosted again by the acoustic, this was the just the kind of celebratory epic sound Mendelssohn might well have been looking for in his mind’s ear when first he wrote his tribute to Luther’s revolution and borrowed his hymn for the finale.
The Palm Beach Symphony will wrap its season next week at the Flagler Museum with a performance featuring pianist Lola Astanova in the Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto (in C minor, Op. 18) and the Symphony No. 3 (in E-flat, Op. 55, Eroica) of Beethoven. The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $50. Call 655-2657 or visit www.palmbeachsymphony.com.
Theater roundup: Romance and its aftermath, on three stages
A former musician turned playwright, Michael Hollinger is clearly fascinated with the music of words.
Such an interest was evident in his earlier play, Opus, about the search for harmony among the members of a string quartet. A similar verbal playfulness is present in his latest work, Ghost-Writer, a look at the creative process of a fastidious novelist, who dictates his prose to his loyal secretary, in this life and perhaps beyond.
Set in Manhattan in 1919, this compact, 85-minute play centers on the renowned, albeit fictional, man of letters Franklin Woolsey and his efficient new typist Myra Babbage. Together, they set down on paper his latest, and last, tome, he providing the words and she adding the punctuation. Over time, they work so closely that Myra begins to anticipate what Woolsey is about to say. And when he dies suddenly, she insists that she continues to receive his dictation and she completes his novel, much to the irritation and envy of his widow.
It is possible that Woolsey is communicating from beyond the grave, but we only have Myra’s word for that, as she tells her far-fetched tale to an unseen interrogator sent by Mrs. Woolsey to debunk the prim young woman’s account. But it seems more likely that Hollinger is intent on considering the nature of inspiration, as supernatural a phenomenon as any ghost. And if something romantic was blossoming between employer and employee, that too is an emotional state difficult to define.
Florida Stage has been producing plays by Hollinger for the past 14 years, including Opus -- which went on to acclaim off-Broadway -- and now Ghost-Writer. Director Louis Tyrrell draws us into the hermetically sealed world of Franklin and Myra, in a captivating production that makes astute use of the company’s new quarters at the Kravis Center.
Much of the play rests on the shoulders of Kate Eastwood Norris, who has the audience mesmerized from her carefully worded opening monologue. She knows her station, but let Woolsey suggest a semi-colon when a full-stop period is called for and she will speak up firmly. As Woolsey, J. Fred Shiffman is a worthy foil for her, taking great umbrage at each word choice challenge. And when, strictly for literary research, Woolsey asks Myra to teach him a ballroom dance, the ambient temperature in the Rinker Playhouse rises a few degrees.
Completing the play’s triangle is Lourelene Snedeker as imperious Vivian Woolsey, whose distain for Myra is both comic and touching. Ultimately, Ghost-Writer is a love story -- romantic love and love of the power of words -- and a play to admire.
GHOST-WRITER, Florida Stage at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday, April 3. Tickets: $25-$50. Call: (561) 585-3433 or (800) 514-3837.
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During his long tenure as founding artistic director of the Caldwell Theatre Company, Michael Hall was adept at scouting new plays from New York and bringing them to South Florida in well-acted, attractively appointed productions.
With Hall back temporarily from retirement to stage Geoffrey Nauffts’ engrossing Next Fall, it feels like old times at the Caldwell. Not just because of the play’s gay theme, a subject Hall has pioneered in the area, from Bent to The Boys in the Band, to Gross Indecency: The Trials of Oscar Wilde, to Take Me Out.
Unlike those works, though, homosexuality is just one of the issues under consideration in this story of a mismatched couple, 15 years apart in age, one a devout fundamentalist Christian and the other a staunch atheist. As the play begins, believer Luke, a 20-something actor wannabe, is hit by a taxi, landing him in a coma in the intensive care unit of Beth Israel Hospital.
There his partner Adam and a couple of Luke’s friends hold vigil in the waiting room, along with the collision victim’s North Florida parents, who are both ignorant of their son’s sexual orientation and that he has been living with Adam for the past four years.
Yes, it is a recipe for soap opera, but Nauffts, artistic director of New York’s Naked Angels theater company, is too smart to settle for easy answers or white hat-black hat heroes and villains. True, Luke’s father Butch is rather homophobic and racist, but particularly as played by Dennis Bateman, he comes across as a fully dimensional character rather than a stereotypical bigot.
Still, he is an embarrassment to his former wife, Arlene, a tough cookie played with wily smarts by Caldwell veteran Pat Nesbit. She injects humor into the dour situation, which would be leavening relief if all of the characters were not so quick with a quip. Fortunately, Hall encourages his cast to flesh out these characters beyond the schematic extremes on the page.
As Adam, Tom Wahl projects a likeability, despite his evident neuroses. He is not only uncomfortable with his partner Luke’s (Josh Canfield) spiritual beliefs, but annoyed by his habit of praying for forgiveness after sex. In his Caldwell debut, the extremely buff Canfield refuses to settle for a caricature of a religious zealot. While Nauffts never quite convinces us that these two very different men would live together for so long, the actors convey an unforced affection that fills that gap.
Scenic designer Tim Bennett allows the play to move briskly over time and space with an efficient, attractive earth-tone unit set that makes crafty use of slide-away panels. The result is a reminder of why the Caldwell has been such a theatrical mainstay in South Florida for four decades, bringing thought-provoking plays to the area and, when necessary, glossing over their weaknesses with first-rate productions.
NEXT FALL, Caldwell Theatre Co., 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, March 27. Tickets: $27-$75. Call: (561) 241-7432 0r (877) 245-7432.
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In its pursuit of “theater to think about,” Palm Beach Dramaworks has been showcasing a Pulitzer Prize winner each season, as long as it has something to say to a contemporary audience and can fit on the company’s intimate -- as in small -- stage.
Filling that bill, thanks to some directorial ingenuity by J. Barry Lewis and a clever scenic design by Vince Mountain, is Donald Margulies’ Dinner with Friends, a look at the emotional toll of a shattered marriage on not only the divorcing couple, but their closest friends as well.
After all, who does not know people who have trudged through the minefield of divorce, or experienced it themselves?
Loaded with insights, laced with pain and yet plenty of character-driven humor, chances are you will find yourself identifying with some of these four 40-something folks and pondering their parallels to your own life.
Margulies is aided by Lewis’s cast, all new to the Dramaworks stage, although Erin Joy Schmidt and Jim Ballard, as freelance food writers Karen and Gabe, should be familiar to South Florida theatergoers from their work in the region. Playing their longtime friends, Tom and Beth -- the splitting duo that Karen and Gabe introduced to each other a dozen years ago -- are Eric Martin Brown and Sarah Grace Wilson, who are married in real life, which may explain the authenticity they bring to their first-act verbal battle.
The play begins on a light note, as Karen and Gabe babble on to Beth about their recent culinary tour of Italy, as they ply her with pumpkin risotto, grilled lamb and lemon-almond polenta cake. Eventually they pause long enough for Beth to blurt out between sobs that Tom has left her for another woman. A travel agent, no less.
That unexpected jolt triggers reflection on Gabe and Karen’s part, not only about the effect on their relationship with Beth and Tom, but ultimately about the nature and durability of their own marriage. Of course, the situation is not as simple as first presented, as Margulies then layers on additional information that has us changing our allegiances between the separating couple, as, for instance, when we learn of Beth’s own indiscretions soon after she married Tom.
As he has in such other plays as Sight Unseen, Collected Stories and Brooklyn Boy, Margulies manages to be profound without drifting into the philosophical. There have been plenty of plays and films about divorce, but few as accessible and thought-provoking. Margulies has a way of getting inside our heads and under our skin, and this Dramaworks production is a nourishing theatrical meal.
DINNER WITH FRIENDS, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 322 Banyan Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sun., April 17. Tickets: $47. Call: (561) 514-4042.
‘Memory Palace’ a haunting story of illness, loss and remembrance
Norma Kurap Herr was a talented musician when she started hearing voices at age 19. She struggled with schizophrenia for the rest of her life, and was in and out of psychiatric wards and often homeless before she died at age 80.
In this new memoir Mira Bartok, one of Herr’s two daughters, describes in heartbreaking detail her mother’s descent into chaos and its effect on the author and her sister.
Herr frequently threatened to kill herself and warned her daughters to be careful because someone, perhaps Nazis, might try to kidnap, kill or rape them. At night she would pound on her daughters’ bedroom door, screaming and frightening them. In one scary scene, Herr grabs a broken bottle, pins the author to the floor, slices into her neck and threatens to kill her.
Finally, as young adults, Bartok and her sister reluctantly decide to change their names and cut off all contact with their mother. They communicate with her through a post office box, but do not see her again for 17 years.
Bartok is an engaging writer who helps us see the devastation of schizophrenia and its cruel impact on a brilliant woman who loved music and art, but was captive to a malady that took control of her brain. Bartok quotes another schizophrenic as saying, “It’s like your head is plugged into every electric socket in every house on every street.”
The book excels in its exploration of the fragility of memory, which is particularly relevant here because Bartok was involved in a horrific traffic accident that severely damaged her brain in 1999. It appears that she still has difficulty performing simple everyday tasks.
Bartok describes the science of memory, the impact of brain damage on memory, and the difficulty of trying to write an accurate memoir when her memory is foggy and sometimes differs from what her sister recalls. The author admits her confusion and uncertainty about certain particulars and conversations.
Before the age of 10, she writes, children “have a kind of childlike amnesia.” As adults, they might learn about long-ago events from someone who cannot tell the difference between reality and a dream.
The author’s discussion of her leaky memory raises the obvious question of how she could recall numerous word-for-word conversations from decades ago.
The book’s title comes from a Jesuit priest who visited China to teach scholars how to create an imaginary palace to keep their memories safe.
Although the first half of this book captures the reader’s interest as it describes the chaos of living with a schizophrenic mother, much of the second half meanders as Bartok travels to Italy, Israel, and Norway for extended stays. She writes children’s books, marries and divorces a man who suffers from apparent bipolar illness, pursues her devotion to art and sets out to learn more about her dad, “an aspiring alcoholic writer” who left the family when the author was 4 years old.
But these chapters serve as a diversion that take us away from the central theme of Bartok’s complicated, strained relationship with her sick mother, who loves her daughters deeply even while she while she is gripped by a terrible illness.
When Bartok and her sister learn in 2006 that their mother is dying from cancer, they return to Cleveland to be with her. They find the key to a U-Haul storage locker where their mom has put family memorabilia, journals and letters that bring back memories and show how much she loved them.
In a poignant scene of mother-daughter love and renewed connection, the author helps her terminally ill mother to the bathroom, and then assists her as they move slowly back toward the mother’s bed.
“We stay in the middle of the room for a long time, holding on to each other” Bartok writes. “I wrap my arms around her tighter. My mother closes her eyes and relaxes into my embrace.”
The Memory Palace: A Memoir, by Mira Bartok. Free Press, 305 pp., $25
Bill Williams is a freelance writer in West Hartford, Conn., and a former editorial writer for The Hartford Courant. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .


