In MEMOIRS OF A BAR BRAT, Judith A. Boggess works a time-traveler’s magic. Reading it, you feel as if you are racing with her down the streets of 1950s Rosedale, New York to watch the latest Jimmy Cagney film or help her brother catch eels in the local creek. But more than just the details of time and place, Boggess has recaptured perfectly the spirit of childhood: the openness to experience that makes the world sometimes more magical and sometimes infinitely more painful and lonely. It is hard to believe she wrote her book 67 years after she lived it.
Some of the indignities Boggess recounts are of the sort most former children can probably read with a wince and a chuckle of recognition. When young Judy learns that Jimmy Cagney does not really die when he dies in a film, for example, she is both humiliated by the laughter of the adults around her and strangely mournful for the loss of such a complete faith in cinema. But Boggess’ childhood was also uniquely painful in many ways. Her parents were physically abusive to each other and verbally abusive and neglectful towards her. There are, full warning, particularly traumatic events in her life that are difficult to read.
However, because Boggess does such a good job of showing the reader the world through young Judy’s eyes, these events are told with a child-like matter-of-factness and poetry that ease the raw brutality of the facts while enhancing their emotional impact. Of her parents’ repetitive fights, she writes, “It was like a movie script they kept rehearsing and couldn’t get right so ‘The End’ could flash across the screen.” The metaphor conveys the horror of the cycle of abuse in language that makes sense for a film-obsessed young dreamer, and it is all the more poignant for it.
CONFESSIONS OF A BAR BRAT also has moments of levity, often provided by Judy’s irrepressible spirit and unique outlook. Her memories of recreating Fred-and-Ginger dance routines with her best friend, designing Edith-Head inspired gowns for her paper dolls, rolling-skating next to cars in the street, and charging local children to hear her recite a minute’s worth of swear words without repeating herself, keep the reader turning the pages to join her in her next adventure. Boggess turns Judy into someone the reader enjoys spending time with, so that, when the harder moments come, they are willing to stay and face them through her eyes.
~Olivia Rosane for IndieReader