My Mother Takes a Tumble

by Eric Kraft

Overview

Peter Leroy explores his earliest memories, which involve Dudley Beaker, a next-door neighbor with a shady occupation; Eliza Foote, a shapely blonde (a product of his imagination); six kittens and one red wagon; and his mother's tumble from her lawn chair.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940011836589
Publisher:	The Babbington Press
Publication date:	10/05/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	72
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Eric Kraft grew up in Babylon, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island, where he was for a time co-owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He met or invented the character Peter Leroy while dozing over a German lesson during his first year at Harvard. The following year, he married his muse, Madeline Canning; they have two sons. After earning a Master’s Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Kraft taught school in the Boston area for a while, moonlighting as a rock music critic for the Boston Phoenix. Since then, he has undertaken a variety of hackwork to support the Kraft ménage and the writing of the voluminous work of fiction that he calls The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. He has been the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; was, briefly, chairman of PEN New England; and has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.

Editorial Reviews

"A good half of [My Mother Takes a Tumble] is spent on a loony romantic correspondence between a man and a woman, where each thinks the other is someone else, and each writes in the guise if the opposite sex. Somehow this oddball romance intertwines with Peter's first memory -- piling a litter of kittens into his wagon -- and the day his mother fell out of her lawn chair. Shocks of recognition abound, and everything is funny as hell."

The Bloomsbury Review - Malcolm Jones

"Eric Kraft has spent his writing career creating a series of comic masterpieces. . . and am I ever glad he did. . . . The books can be read in any order, but be warned: Once you start the series, you won't want to read anything else until you finish them all."

Book Lust - Nancy Pearl

"Because Kraft expresses an abiding faith in steadfast love and impossible dreams, because he uses humor to shape a humanistic ethos, and because he takes profound pleasure in the resonance of language and the magic of storytelling, reading Kraft's inventive and effervescent tales is a rare and sustaining joy."

Newsday - Donna Seaman

"[Kraft's Peter Leroy series is] perhaps the most ambitious and rewarding literary enterprise of our time. . . . Even when you find yourself laughing aloud, it would be a mistake to take Eric Kraft lightly."

The San Francisco Chronicle - Andrew Ervin

"The cumulative effect of Kraft's work is of a sober humor that refuses easy answers. . . . This is crafty work indeed and certain to endure when more pretentious and more touted writers are forgotten."

The Compulsive Reader - Bob Williams