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jgintrovertedreader's review
4.0
In The Prince of Frogtown, Rick Bragg sets out to discover the father that he never really knew. I have read these books all out of order, but apparently in All Over But the Shoutin', Bragg painted his father, Charlie, as a no-account mean drunk. After its publication, people who knew his father came to him and said, "I wish you'd talked to me before you wrote all that." So he talked to them and this is the result. His father is still a no-account mean drunk, but Rick and the reader come away with a better understanding of the man.
Having now read one of Bragg's books and listened to another, I am torn about the best medium. I'm left thinking that the best thing for everyone would be if his publishers just gave us one of those readalong books I remember from when I was little. "You'll know it's time to turn the page when you hear the chime ring like this: Dlililing!" Man, I loved those things. I could listen to Rick Bragg all day. His slow speech, his accent, his word choice--it's all the language of my family and the stories we tell. We might not be up on a stage telling stories, but we sure can take the smallest event from our days and spin it out into a good long tale. But as I was listening, I found myself just absolutely dying to mark quotes in a physical copy. Whether Bragg was cracking a joke about understanding a woman's thinking (A passage that included mapping the stars on a bubble gum wrapper with chalk and only got better from there), telling a hilarious story about his father scaring his grandmother half to death when he was little, or making a keen observation about fathers and sons or even mothers and sons, there were real jewels in here. And I couldn't mark them or flag them. Readalong books. Are you paying attention, publishers? That's the way to go.
Anyway, I loved this just as much as I loved Ava's Man. It's a darker book because his father had a lot of darkness inside him. But I enjoyed the stories of Charlie as a child and teenager, before he went to war and came back haunted. His life even then was not an easy one and I think we all are left wondering whether he would have turned out pretty much the same way even if he hadn't ever gone to Korea. He had good moments sometimes too, and even though I knew how things had to turn out, I was left hoping that this time he would change his life. He never did and I was left thankful for my own steadfast father.
The book goes back and forth between stories of Charlie and stories about Rick and his stepson. I really liked that setup. It felt like Rick gained a better understanding of his father as he realized how hard fatherhood is if you're trying to do it right. His long-suffering wife deserves an award, I swear. He makes mistakes along the way, but it sounds like he gets it right in the end. The love he feels for his stepson just comes through so clearly as he reads about him, even when he's talking about what a mama's boy the kid is.
I have discovered that I love Rick Bragg's writing, so I'll be searching out all his books. I highly recommend him.
Having now read one of Bragg's books and listened to another, I am torn about the best medium. I'm left thinking that the best thing for everyone would be if his publishers just gave us one of those readalong books I remember from when I was little. "You'll know it's time to turn the page when you hear the chime ring like this: Dlililing!" Man, I loved those things. I could listen to Rick Bragg all day. His slow speech, his accent, his word choice--it's all the language of my family and the stories we tell. We might not be up on a stage telling stories, but we sure can take the smallest event from our days and spin it out into a good long tale. But as I was listening, I found myself just absolutely dying to mark quotes in a physical copy. Whether Bragg was cracking a joke about understanding a woman's thinking (A passage that included mapping the stars on a bubble gum wrapper with chalk and only got better from there), telling a hilarious story about his father scaring his grandmother half to death when he was little, or making a keen observation about fathers and sons or even mothers and sons, there were real jewels in here. And I couldn't mark them or flag them. Readalong books. Are you paying attention, publishers? That's the way to go.
Anyway, I loved this just as much as I loved Ava's Man. It's a darker book because his father had a lot of darkness inside him. But I enjoyed the stories of Charlie as a child and teenager, before he went to war and came back haunted. His life even then was not an easy one and I think we all are left wondering whether he would have turned out pretty much the same way even if he hadn't ever gone to Korea. He had good moments sometimes too, and even though I knew how things had to turn out, I was left hoping that this time he would change his life. He never did and I was left thankful for my own steadfast father.
The book goes back and forth between stories of Charlie and stories about Rick and his stepson. I really liked that setup. It felt like Rick gained a better understanding of his father as he realized how hard fatherhood is if you're trying to do it right. His long-suffering wife deserves an award, I swear. He makes mistakes along the way, but it sounds like he gets it right in the end. The love he feels for his stepson just comes through so clearly as he reads about him, even when he's talking about what a mama's boy the kid is.
I have discovered that I love Rick Bragg's writing, so I'll be searching out all his books. I highly recommend him.
shirleytupperfreeman's review
The last of Bragg's memoirs. I loved it. The chapters about his developing relationship with his stepson and his growing understanding of fatherhood are laugh-out-loud funny. I was only going to read the first book for the community read program but I'm so glad I read them all.
cathyatratedreads's review
3.0
In some parts of the book, I'd definitely give this 4 stars; some, just 3. The writing style is vivid and brings to life the area of Alabama in which I lived for 10 years and that still somehow eluded me in many ways -- I simply could not know or understand what it was like to live as Bragg's people did for so long. Bragg can come across as self-absorbed and sometimes just frustrating -- he knows it as well as we do and goes with it. But he has such a way with words, and has to be ranked with some of the best Southern writers. For those who particularly enjoy Southern literature, this and his other books will be gems in their collections. I'm not a *huge* fan of Southern lit but appreciate it in measured doses. At any rate, can definitely recommend Bragg's writing.
Read my full review, including a rating for content, at RatedReads.com: https://ratedreads.com/prince-frogtown-clean-nonfiction-book-review/
Read my full review, including a rating for content, at RatedReads.com: https://ratedreads.com/prince-frogtown-clean-nonfiction-book-review/
sarahfrog's review
4.0
I think Rick Bragg is an evocative story teller, and I think his memoirs are strong, probably partially owing to him being a journalist. This third memoir is about his mostly absent father--who was written off as a mere footnote in his previous books. Bragg delves into his father's childhood and his growing up in a mill town in Appalachia and how this shaped his character, for better--and more often, worse. His father was a hard-drinking man, who fell further and further into the bottle, eventually succumbing to it completely. Bragg decided to write this memoir after he married and became a stepfather, to a boy he did not relate to. I thought the bits about 'the Boy' were a very honest accounting of what step-parenting feels like, on so many levels for so many people. It is rarely easy, and harder still for a man like Bragg who grew up with an essentially absent father--but the specter of whom hung over him throughout his childhood and far into adulthood.
judyward's review
3.0
I've now devoted enough time examining Rick Bragg's childhood. I get it. It was horrible. I enjoyed the first two volumes in this trilogy (All Over But the Shoutin' and Ava's Man) more than this one. I got the impression that he was meeting a deadline and rushed the writing. Basically the story of how after years of the single life, Bragg gets married to "the woman" and becomes the stepfather of a 10 year old boy. Believing that he is unsuited for stepfatherhood (is that a word? I doubt it.), he reexamines his relationship with his own father, his stepson, and, ultimately, himself. Merging his father's story with musings on the present is an interesting weaving of the two tales. This book also reminded me--as if 10,000 others didn't also--that you can try to deal with your past, but you can never really put it behind you.
leleroulant's review
4.0
It's official! Rick Bragg is one of my new favorite authors! His prose are so beautiful and characters so endearing.... This book is the third in the sort-of trilogy about his family. About his drunk, absent father, he tells of his fathers childhood and the environment in which he lived. He explains his father's behavior while never apoligizing for it.