Anthopolgies: A Family Memoir

If you have experienced the truth, joy and pain of listening to the words from your favorite story spoken by a trustworthy voice , you will appreciate Anthropologies: A family Memoir by Beth Alvarado.  Beth Alvarado evokes comfortable and uncomfortable emotions by crafting relatable environments that hold readers in time and place as if we were there experiencing the turn of events first hand. The question is how does she do it?

The book is divided into three parts, Notes on Silence, Notes on Travel and Notes on Art. The parts function to frame the reader thus the relatable environment begins.  In Notes on Silence, Alvarado immediately makes the reader feel comfortable by telling the story in first person. Its as if we are sitting in the small dinning room with Alvarado and her mother listening to the story, savoring the words one by one, anticipating the arrival of the next word before the first one is complete. Additionally, rather than showing us what the environment is, she shows us what the environment isn't.  She writes about her mother, "She no longer plays golf. She no longer plays the piano. She no longer paints Chinese watercolors or plays bridge with her friends...she is still beautiful." By telling us what her mother isn't, we get a vivid image of what her mother was and what she is now.   In place of long, descriptive narrative about her mother's condition, Alvarado uses concise sentences that tell enough to make the point and create intrigue while making space for the reader to participant in the scene by imagining everything that is not said, For example, "The oxygen machine hums in the background."

Again, When she introduces her drug addition, Alvarado employs the craft of placing the reading in the story.  She writes, "There are marks on my arms, but my mother never mentions them." As I read, I imagine myself there in 1972 watching Alvarado in her "black tee shirt, baggy bell bottoms" with marks on her arms wondering how silence can speak so loudly.  Admiring the economy of words.

In Notes on Travel, Alvarado uses more description mixed with concise sentences.  The concise sentences remind us that we are included in the story.  "We plan our extravagant dinner. I will drink a crisp white wine. A grilled artichoke with aioli for starters.  Then for the gentleman, sea bass wrapped in a potato crust, tiny spring asparagus on the side."  The description is so well done, that I can smell the sea bass and taste the asparagus.  Words like "we plan" and "for starters" create a slower pace and allow us to take our time enjoying the environment Alvarado creates.  Rather real, dreamed or imagined, its as if we are there as silent observers taking it all in.

Stacy Johnson