Review of Leaving the Pink House by Ladette Randolph

爱荷华大学出版社，2015。

by James Crews

作为

拉

在

再保险

作为

You could say that buying and renovating a house, raising a family, or keeping a marriage afloat are just a few of the ways we are all “trying to make sense of a world” in which 9/11 and school shootings and marathon bombings are now not only possible, but tragically common. But Randolph’s memoir invites us to open ourselves to an empathy and understanding as wide as the Nebraska sky. Like any good book, Leaving the Pink House is about the many choices we make that determine the course of our lives. Yet what an act of mercy it would be to forgive ourselves, as Randolph does, for the past and even for the future as it stretches uncertainly before us, promising sorrows, joys, successes and failures. What an act of kindness to offer us these glimpses into a life unclouded by regret or melodrama, focused only on telling honest stories with compassion and clarity, and sharing what John Updike once called “the human news.”