Friday, Dec. 21, 2001
How I Came Into My Inheritance by Dorothy Gallagher
No memoir about caring for elderly parents is quite like this one, a piercingly funny book without a joke in it. Dorothy Gallagher opens with the sickroom of Bella and Izzy, her Russian-Jewish mother and father, then takes their stories backward in time through the chapters of the American immigrant experience. No filial whining, just keen observations and a steady affection.