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Dec 10, 2017Indoorcamping rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This is one of those books which you might not assume any interest. The writer isn't rich or famous, not someone you'll ever hear about or know, and if you hadn't picked up this book, you might not ever hear about it. But let me tell you, it is incredible and worth every minute of reading time. I read it in a day and a half, as once I got started, I started quoting passages to my husband and he didn't want me to stop, either. So don't judge a book simply because you aren't familiar with orchestras, oboes, classical music or music of any variety. It's going to give you an education about those subjects, as well as let you live through the rich experience of performing music vicariously. And really, it's so much more than the oboe. The music is the thread that carries the writer through some of the harshest living you'd ever want to read about, almost bleeding through the page, written in an almost understated way, revealing secrets in the quiet way you'd expect from someone who plays oboe in Carnegie Hall for a living. And through this quiet, steady, lyrical, honest, realistic yet totally in denial-filled voice, you understand and live her story. And it's incredible. If you enjoy the triumphant, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, square peg in a round hole, quirky, unique/nobody you've ever heard of type of memoir, this is for you. You can experience being so poor you eat a head of iceberg lettuce with a bottle of Russian salad dressing for your one meal. You can get your empathy expanded for women who stay and who return over and over to horrible abusers. You can live through what it's like to perform on Broadway, what it's like to develop talent into something spectacular that becomes noticed and valuable even while you have to take rides from people driving you from one performance to the next in lightning speed while drinking bottles of vodka. We're all nobodies, really, yet we all have some special thing that gets us up in the morning. This is the best description I've read in a long while of exactly that drive, that grit, that motivation that pulls us normal humans through sheer terror and trauma to ultimately make it to something of a successful life.