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River Bend Chronicle is a memoir starting in approximately the late 1960s or early 1970s after the author came to Davenport. I call it a literary memoir because of the detailed, vivid, colorful and fresh, almost poetic, descriptions and writing style. The text is filled with subtle humor. If we're talking English composition, the long, somewhat drawn out style is inappropriate. But for a literary piece, it fits perfectly. Some of the expressions reminded me of A Christmas Story: ornate, musical, and subtly humorous.
Parenthesis were numerous in the book, especially more toward the beginning. Sometimes they added to the story, so the parenthesis marks weren't necessary. At other times, they were distracting or didn't add to the story and could've been eliminated. The book also included photographs that I recognized as subjects around Davenport but I would've liked to have seen captions. These are minor issues, however, and never tempted me to stop reading.
The book is not just a memoir or a life story; it's a study of the author's life to find meaning and the cause and effect of how and why it turned out as it did. And really, it is the story of a writer and how this particular writer came to be from despair. It seems that, like a lot of writers, the writer was always within Ben Miller waiting to get out, and thankfully it did. I can relate; in all my young experiences, especially despair, I turned to words to cope.
In addition to the content, the words themselves evoke sad overtones of something lost and missed. It's an insightful, thought-provoking journey of a life from point A to point B.
There seems to be several, weaved-together layers in this memoir. The story is also about a boy's tumultuous, complicated relationship with his family that reflects in depth on being the eldest sibling amid a dysfunction that seemed to be rampant in families during the 1970s.
The story was engaging, but heavy, taking me a couple of weeks to read so on a can't-put-it-down-scale of one for I couldn't even finish it to ten for I was up until the wee morning hours, I would give it a six and a half.
If you're looking for a light, beach read, this book is not for you. If you like to study people and delve into their minds to find out how they tick, you would enjoy this book. It shows that we Iowans are more than farmers living ideal, rural lives but that many of us live in real cities with real hurts.
Source: Miller, Ben. 2013. River Bend Chronicle. Lookout Books: Wilmington.
*These people were associated with The Midwest Writing Center, a non-profit organization in its pre-infancy (and maybe infancy) during the time period the book covers. I volunteer for MWC and serve on its Board of Directors.
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