The Trouble with Being Born

Novel, memoir, and anti-memoir, The Trouble with Being Borndepicts the lives of Frances and Joe, husband and wife. Told in their own alternating voices, they recall their lives, separately and together, and the divergent trajectories of their origins and aspirations. Frances's story moves in reverse: beginning with her dementia in old age, her narrative moves backwards into lucidity, through a cruel and loveless marriage, the birth of her son Jeffrey, and into a childhood that she recalls fondly as a time of innocence and belonging. Joe's memories begin in childhood, a bewildered boy struggling with poverty, racism, and isolation, and we watch him grow into a manhood fraught with wrong turns, rage, betrayals, and disappointment, caring in the end for the woman he has long mistreated. The Trouble with Being Bornis a stark meditation on memory and the struggleboth necessary and impossibleto remember.

Jeffrey Deshell is an associate professor and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder.