NATIONAL BESTSELLERONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:VOGUE • FORBES • BOOKPAGE • NEW YORK POST • WIRED“I have not been as profoundly moved by a book in years.” —Jodi PicoultEven after she left home for Hollywood, Emmy-nominated TV writer Bess Kalb saved every voicemail her grandmother Bobby Bell ever left her. Bobby was a force—irrepressible, glamorous, unapologetically opinionated. Bobby doted … force—irrepressible, glamorous, unapologetically opinionated. Bobby doted on Bess; Bess adored Bobby. Then, at ninety, Bobby died. But in this debut memoir, Bobby is speaking to Bess once more, in a voice as passionate as it ever was in life.
Recounting both family lore and family secrets, Bobby brings us four generations of indomitable women and the men who loved them. There’s Bobby’s mother, who traveled solo from Belarus to America in the 1880s to escape the pogroms, and Bess’s mother, a 1970s rebel who always fought against convention. But it was Bobby and Bess who always had the most powerful bond: Bobby her granddaughter’s fiercest supporter, giving Bess unequivocal love, even if sometimes of the toughest kind. Nobody Will Tell You This But Me marks the creation of a totally new, virtuosic form of memoir: a reconstruction of a beloved grandmother’s words and wisdom to tell her family’s story with equal parts poignancy and hilarity.
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Goodness me, I loved this book. I knew after just a few pages I wouldn’t be putting it down until I was done – I read it in one sitting in the middle of the night. It’s a sort of memoir of Bess Kalb’s grandmother, Bobby, but written in her grandmother’s voice after her death. It’s about family and history and Bobby’s relationships with her mother, her daughter (Bess’s mother) and grandaughter (Bess). Four generations of strong and sometimes difficult women. It’s funny and moving and life-affirming and just gorgeous.
Loved this grandmother! She had such colorful style and loved her family so much. Was a good read for sure! The author made her
I really didn’t care for this book. I only read a small portion of it. Just wasn’t for me.
I could recognize the speech and traits of older Jewish friends I have known. So sweet!
The mother- daughter relationships were sad, but not uncommon
An absolute delight. Read this book in one sitting and enjoyed it immensely.
It was about a Jewish woman and her grandparents who lived in NYC. I also am Jewish and live in NYC, so it was very personal, and quite charming and true.
Loved this book and the writing style – a friend recommended it to me and I will pay that recommendation forward.
“When the earth is cracking behind your feet and it feels like the whole world is going to swallow you up, you put one foot in front of the other and you keep going.”
Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Bess Kalb is in the author’s words ‘a matrilineal love story’. The author writing in her grandmother’s voice gives life to four generations of women and their sometimes complicated, but loving relationship with each other. I absolutely loved this book and I know that because I couldn’t stop crying in the last part of the book. Even though our stories are different, I could completely sympathize with the author and the love and loss of her grandmother. I told my mother not less than five times she needed to read this book in the two days it took me to read it. Nobody Will Tell You This But Me is everything I love about memoirs. It’s the funny, heartbreaking, and heartwarming stories passed down from mother to daughter that never die and keeps the past alive.
Bookstagram: @hopeless.book.romantic
First off, hearing the author read this book was fantastic. She brings such life to story and she was wonderful to listen to. Second, I was not expecting this! I picked this up thinking it would be a lighthearted, maybe silly, listen. It turned out to be a moving, heartfelt story of Kalb’s grandmother, from her mother’s life in the Old Country to her own childhood to her troubled relationship with her daughter (Kalb’s mom) to her death. I looked forward each day to listening to more of the story. I did not expect to be moved as I was. This is what a memoir should be. Amazing.
Love memoirs and this one is uniquely entertaining and a quick read.
This is a lovely memoir about the relationship between Bess Kalb and her Grandma Bobby. Masterfully written in the voice of Grandma Bobby who has died, the book runs the range of emotions- laughter, tears, love. Their loving relationship is revealed through oral narratives, conversations, emails, phone calls, voicemails, and photos. You can’t help laughing at the Jewish grandmother telling her granddaughter how to live her life and the granddaughter’s respectful responses.