Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Showing of 3 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. This book breaks that stereotype as Ron McDole was a standout defensive lineman during an eighteen-year career with the Buffalo Bills and Washington Redskins. As a reader would expect, the stories that come from a lineman are very different than those that would come from a skill position.
There are aspects of the book that do fit the typical sports memoir and some that break the mold. McDole follows a tried and true form by starting with his childhood, then talks about his playing days in high school and at the University of Nebraska. He continues it with stories from his time with both professional teams with which he played. That is where a change in the usual method takes place.
Instead of talking about particular games or seasons in the order they came, he becomes a storyteller. Most of these stories come from teammates, although there are stories from family members and personal friends later in the book. At times, these felt out of place because just like when one asks someone to reflect on a person, the narrator can go off on tangents.
That was good because that made the stories sound more genuine and natural, but it did make reading the book take a little longer as it got off the narrative track McDole was telling. In another story, it was given to him earlier. The stories are both probably true, as they came from the memories of the men telling them, but the information seems to conflict. The latter game is one in which McDole tells about his bitter disappointment with the loss by the Redskins, but what I especially liked about that topic is the illustration of how little attention the Super Bowl received during its early days, at least in comparison to the spectacle it has become today.
Much like the career of the author, this book is a hidden gem that while it may not be the best sports memoir ever written, it does a nice job of portraying a man whose performance in the game may not have brought a lot of recognition from fans or the media, but it did garner widespread praise among his coaches and peers. I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
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One person found this helpful. I Highly recommend this book to ALL football fans. Loved the stories and respect that Rons peers had for him.
A Stolen Life (book) - Wikipedia
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Speaking Your Truth: An Interview with Joyce Maynard
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Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Explore the Home Gift Guide. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. These days Maynard spends time teaching in several locations.
This is your ninth novel.
What has become easier for you in writing fiction? What has become more difficult? How has your process changed over the years? After it was finished, I was left very briefly with the idea that this was how it would be for me, as a fiction writer. An idea would hit. I still write relatively fast—though never again as I did with Baby Love. What takes the most time is the thinking part.
I spend months working on a story in my head, before I write—and more months, sometimes, on false starts. In many ways, the writing has gotten harder because my standards for my work have gone up since I was young.
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There are just so many books out there. And I want to stretch myself as a writer. If I kept on doing what I already know how to do, what would be the point? What is your own experience with that concept? My narrator, Helen, has been, for much of her life, a person who allowed other people to chart her course. If a man loved her, that was reason to be with him. And when a rich, glamorous, exciting couple—Ava and Swift—invite her to be a part of their lives, she abandons just about everything to join them there.
I was never such a person, myself. I have certainly known the feeling of being lost and alone, and the longing to be accepted. When I was younger, I was much more ready to believe that other people had things figured out so much better than I did. You know the syndrome: One of the gifts of age is that I no longer feel the urge to be like anyone else.
I figured that out a while back. We all know people who seem to have it all, no matter what their socioeconomic level. Could you talk about why your protagonist Helen falls for them so hard and so fast? Most of all she is seduced by the attention they show her. At one point, early in the story, she reflects on how flattered she is that Swift calls her by her name.
Helen has been an invisible person—in her own perception of herself, at least. They pay attention to her. Why is it important to show that? I wanted to explore the shallow appeal of grand gestures, big romantic proclamations, romantic fantasies—against the backdrop of a quieter, less ostentatious brand of behavior and character. Elliot—whom they call boring—offers Helen something of far greater value. And she fails to recognize it. Same thing with Estella, the Guatemalan housekeeper in the Havilland household.
She just keeps it to herself. But running below the surface, too, is my feeling about my husband Jim—an Eagle Scout, in word and deed. Swift would have dismissed a man like Jim. And Jim would have no use for a character like Swift.
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Though as an attorney, experienced in the art of deception revealing it, not practicing it! Speaking of your own past, but on the professional side: Anything for the better? What would you advise a beginning writer today? I feel grateful every day for the good fortune of having been able to do this thing I love—write, and tell stories—for my entire adult life.
I published my first book—my early memoir, Looking Back —when I was 19 years old. I think I had a pretty strong set of skills already; what took years to acquire was a capacity for greater authenticity. And the courage to write the truth, and nothing less. Advice to a young writer? Write the books you want to read. Then whatever happens on the career side of things, you will please at least one person.
Much of your work and life has taken place in the public eye. What were the good lessons you learned? It was actually reading over the galleys of this new novel—written in the voice of a recovering alcoholic, who lost custody of her son following her arrest for a DUI—that forced me to recognize my own problem.