Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Strong West Wind: A Memoir
    A Strong West Wind: A Memoir
    A Strong West Wind: A Memoir
    Audiobook7 hours

    A Strong West Wind: A Memoir

    Written by Gail Caldwell

    Narrated by Nicole Poole

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Gail Caldwell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic for The Boston Globe. Her book A Strong West Wind is a "metaphor-rich, beautifully structured reminiscence" of a child growing up in the turbulent 1960s (Booklist, starred review). Caldwell was born in Texas in 1951; in a land of plains so vast they frightened her. Caldwell's mother was a clandestine lover of books; her father was a master sergeant in World War II. These personalities shaped Caldwell; during the passionate rebellions of the 1960s, she was one of the "children who once made life hell for 'the Greatest Generation' and in the process turned out pretty great themselves" (Russell Baker, author). Turning to books for each poignant change in her life, Caldwell eventually became what her mother could not: a writer. Throughout these changes, Caldwell is driven by the restless desire she once felt as a child in a small town in Texas. "It's refreshing to read a memoir composed of real introspection and insight, a grown-up's mature perspective on a family and an era."-Washington Post Book World "Caldwell comes through as a wise and winning woman-her descriptive passages ... are wonderfully smart, moving and sympathetic-and she emerges ... a memorable narrator."-Publisher's Weekly, starred review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 11, 2008
    ISBN9781440797736
    A Strong West Wind: A Memoir

    Related to A Strong West Wind

    Related audiobooks

    Personal Memoirs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Five Books We Missed in 2015

      Dec 15, 2015

      Five Books We Missed in 2015
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Marie Myung-Ok Lee

      Dec 22, 2019

      Apparently books about racism and immigration are seriously back in demand. This prompted me to take a dip back in the current pool to see what’s new. The post A Year in Reading: Marie Myung-Ok Lee appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Panic President

      Jun 4, 2017

      The Panic President
      5 min read

    • Article

      April’s BOOK CLUB

      Mar 2, 2023

      Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati (£16.99, HB, Penguin) Clytemnestra, whose name has come to epitomise female wickedness, has found a worthy advocate in Costanza Casati and this fascinating Greek myth retelling. Far from being the cold-hearted killer

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Shipstead, Ryan, Walker, and More

      May 17, 2022

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Maggie Shipstead, Eimer Ryan, Sarai Walker, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millio

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Blue-collar Bard

      Jul 13, 2020

      The Blue-collar Bard
      13 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      May 14, 2020

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      5 min read

    • Article

      Leah Swann

      Mar 25, 2020

      Leah Swann, 49, was born in Melbourne where she remembers a childhood “full of daydreaming, playing outside, storytelling, drawing and reading”. She was always filling notebooks with stories and says over time “it dawned on me I was a writer”. A volu

      1 min read

    • Article

      Birds Of Paradise

      Apr 19, 2022

      Birds Of Paradise
      5 min read

    • Article

      Ann Beattie

      Sep 15, 2017

      I’d started to visit Olivia more often because it was obvious she was lonely. The ALS lady who’d been moved to Hopkins had been Aunt Olivia’s closest friend, leaving aside Merton Hillstead, who actually went home. Even the friendly paperboy who somet

      23 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Joseph Han

      Dec 20, 2022

      Joseph Han reflects on 2022 through the books he read. The post A Year in Reading: Joseph Han appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Tomorrow Man

      Mar 10, 2022

      As a Boston-based psychoanalyst, I have met a number of interesting people. There was Marshall who believed that the world was about to be attacked by alien spores. Carson, who was convinced she had been impregnated by the president of the United Sta

      12 min read

    • Article

      Cleo comes home ‘WE NEVER GAVE UP HOPE’

      Nov 11, 2021

      A collective sigh of relief was echoed across the country when the news that Cleo Smith had been found in the early hours of November 3 was revealed. Eighteen harrowing days after she disappeared from the Blowholes camp site in Western Australia, the

      4 min read

    • Article

      HOW I WRITE Louise Candlish

      Jun 4, 2020

      Renowned for her twisting plots and dark-toned domestic thrillers, Louise Candlish’s latest chilling read, The Other Passenger, has an emotional secret at its core. When I start writing, I always get the first 10,000 words down so I have a good la

      1 min read

    • Article

      TV Pieces Of Her

      Mar 24, 2022

      TV Pieces Of Her
      1 min read

    • Article

      Oxygen

      Jul 19, 2022

      Oxygen
      2 min read

    • Article

      Sisterly Significance

      Feb 24, 2020

      Sisterly Significance
      8 min read

    • Article

      The 22 Murders Of Madison May

      Jul 14, 2021

      ⏵ RELEASED OUT NOW! 336 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ⏵ Author Max Barry ⏵ Publisher Hodder & Stoughton ➔ Why did Quantum Leap’s Dr Sam Beckett never find his way home? This multiverse-hopping sci-fi novel offers an answer: because travellers can

      1 min read

    • Article

      Heather Morris

      Sep 23, 2021

      Heather Morris
      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Strong West Wind

    3/5

    25 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Caldwell fans will have a no brainer and any writer wannabe will want to add this to their list. But for the rest of the readers, Caldwell writes as if she's sprawled in your living room or sharing one of your pockets on a cold day. I picked up the audio and the print.
    • 3/5
      This book is beautifully written, but not really my cup of tea. I had a very hard time getting into and staying in this book.
    • 3/5
      I was drawn to the idea of a memoir written by a literary critic in which she examines the pull of her Texas childhood on the woman she grows into being, who acknowledges the importance of the books she's read in shaping her personality, and who has gone on to have an illustrious and celebrated career in a field that is wildly interesting to me. Unfortunately, unlike almost every other reviewer out there who raves over this memoir, I thought the book fell flat.Divided into two parts: Texas and everything afterwards, this was a painfully slow, navel-gazing read. The writing was able but pretentious. It was emotionally flat. Caldwell is clearly an incredibly erudite woman but her meandering text was a strain. It was a strain to care. It was a strain to stay awake. It was a strain not to close the book for good one night and give into surrender. While she didn't fall into the dysfunctional childhood memoir, exactly, she seems to suggest that her father's exacting and strict influence on her life was somehow injurious. The young girl who overcame being stricken with polio as a baby, who powered through so much on sheer determination as a child, seemed to be lost as she grew up. And in her place was a depressed woman who had somehow lost her way. Riding along with her while she tried to find her sense of self again was not particularly pleasurable, despite the occasional flashes of beautiful imagery. I am essentially alone in my assessment of the book but I don't want another reading experience like this one any time soon.