[CW-Grad] MFA alumna Rebecca O'Connor's new memoir-- starred review in Publisher's Weekly!

[Robin Russin]

 From their website:

Lift: A Memoir
Rebecca K. O’Connor. Red Hen, $18.95 (208p) ISBN 1597094603

Novelist and nature reference author O’Connor (Falcon’s Return) crafts  
a lyrical tribute to the spiritual connection between humans and birds  
in this memoir of the excruciating, transformative process of training  
a peregrine falcon: “Falconry is a religion, a way of thinking, a  
means of experiencing life.” Indeed, readers will find almost as much  
spiritual content as natural. Despite O’Connor’s icy-clear voice, her  
descriptions of training a young male falcon are fascinating for bird  
lovers and civilians alike: “when the falcon connects a high-speed  
dive… the duck remains a piece of the sky and only its body careens to  
earth.” Surprisingly, periodic flashbacks to a troubled childhood—an  
abusive stepfather, an absentee mother—bolster her story rather than  
distract, turning a falcon’s “serious and unmerciful” eye back on her  
own life, and discovering inexplicable wells of generosity and  
forgiveness for the family who wronged her. O’Connor packs a lot of  
intelligence, poise and feeling into a few pages, making this a  
consistently rewarding read.



Rebecca rocks, as usual.

Robin Russin

Associate Professor & Graduate Advisor
Department of Theatre
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
(951) 827-2707
(213) 949-1061 cel
robin.russin at ucr.edu

"I try all things; I achieve what I can." - Ishmael in "Moby Dick,"  
written by Herman Melville

"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it." - William Munny in  
"Unforgiven," written by David Webb Peoples

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/cwgrad-announcements/attachments/20091102/a8c46973/attachment.html