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Blogs by Bill Brent
BOOK REVIEW -- Piano Girl, a memoir, by Robin Meloy Goldsby 8/12/2005 3:03:54 PM
THE PERFECT VACATION BOOK What’s most remarkable about this memoir is Robin Goldsby’s singular and life-embracing voice. Goldsby chronicles her dilemmas with candor, wit, and just enough self-deprecation that she wins the reader’s sympathy without ever straying into annoying self-pity. While her situation is not unique – it’s yet another variation on the classic struggling-artist-in-Manhattan story – she reveals herself in such insightful, self-knowing detail that she lifts this tale far beyond the banal recitation it could have been. At its best, this memoir is an unforgettable recounting of the crazy situations one endures or embraces in order to survive as an imaginative spirit in a mercenary world. (My personal favorite was Goldsby's ecstatic description of dress-shopping at “Stall for the Handicapped,” a clandestine boutique run by an audacious and unusually enterprising restroom attendant in the tony hotel where they both worked.) I dare any reader not to recognize himself or a loved one in at least one of Goldsby's many predicaments.
